A letter from a reader

At 63, every comfortable shoe I owned looked like an apology

I have never written anything like this before, and I want to say at the start that I am not a writer and I am not in the habit of telling other women what to wear.

But three different women asked me about a pair of sandals at the street festival, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

Open my closet a month ago and you would have seen it. A neat row of comfortable shoes in black, beige, black, another black, and one daring dark grey. My feet were well looked after, and dressed for a funeral, every single day of the year.

Comfortable, sensible, and joyless. My whole shoe rack, in three words.

And I never chose that. I want to be clear about it. It chose itself, one sore-footed shopping trip at a time.

The deal nobody says out loud

Here is how shoe shopping goes once your feet start having opinions. You walk past the pretty shoes, because you know better now. You head for the comfort wall. And the comfort wall is beige.

Somewhere, somebody decided that a woman who needs a cushioned footbed has retired from colour. That comfort and fun are different departments. So the shoes that love your feet all look like kitchen appliances, and the shoes with any joy in them are built for feet thirty years younger than mine.

Feet that ache, or feet that apologise. I picked apologise for a decade.

Then I saw red shoes at the senior center

In May, at my quilting group, a woman I had never met walked in wearing bright red walking sandals, and half the room asked about them before she sat down. She lifted a foot onto a chair like a woman forty years younger and said, cushioned, adjustable, and RED, ladies.

They are from Iris & Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now, and they are called the Margaret. I ordered a pair that afternoon, half-convinced red shoes were not for me. That conviction lasted until they arrived.

They are proper comfort sandals, no compromises hiding anywhere. The footbed is soft and quilted under the foot. The instep strap adjusts with a simple tab to exactly the width your foot is having that day. There is a low wedge that walks like a flat, a strap that holds the heel steady, and they come in a wide fit as well, which my right foot personally appreciates.

And they are red. Cheerful, deliberate, matches-nothing-and-goes-with-everything red. My feet have not been this well dressed in twenty years.

What happened at the festival

Their first big test was the street festival on Saturday. Three hours, most of it standing or walking on pavement, the kind of afternoon I usually plan around benches.

Three different women asked me about them, two pointing straight down at my feet without preamble. And Sue looked down and said, well now, look who has red shoes. Indeed, Sue. Look who does.

But the part I keep coming back to is what did not happen. I did not scan for benches. I did not do the discreet lean against a lamppost while pretending to study the craft stalls. I walked the whole festival, end to end and back, and my feet simply came along like it was nothing.

They have since done the farmers market, two long dog walks, and an airport, and the answer has been the same every time.

Three things I have learned since

One. The adjustable strap is the quiet hero. Feet change through the day, and the little tab means the sandal changes with them. Snug in the morning, roomier by evening, comfortable the whole way through.

Two. Red goes with everything. I doubted this. I was wrong. Denim, white, beige, florals, the red works with all of it, and it makes even my plainest outfit look like a decision.

Three. The wide fit is real. Sizes 4.5 to 11, in a normal and a genuine wide fit, in six colours. Whoever planned that range has met actual women's actual feet.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Margaret is $49.95. It was $100.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because comfort sandals with any style to them usually cost twice that and still come in beige.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they run a summer sale to move the season's stock.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. One woman had written, “Walked all day on vacation with no aching feet, and I keep getting stopped about the color. I went back for the green pair.” That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sitting on the porch with an iced tea and you asked me, this is what I would say.

Go look at your shoe rack and count the colours. If the answer is black, beige, and a daring grey, then your feet have been apologising for years, and they never needed to. The comfort you rely on comes in red now. Somebody finally bothered.

Not because sandals change anything. They do not. But walking a whole festival with happy feet, in shoes that strangers compliment, is the kind of small double win I had stopped expecting from a shoe store.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first. And once this stock is gone, it is gone.

My feet wear red now, and they have never been happier.

Peggy