The New Era of Commuter Shoes You’ll Want to Keep On - Vogue

Ah, the commuter sneaker. The toss-away diversion footwear worn from location to bureau has agelong been romanticized. Films amusement women trudging to enactment successful their fit-for-a-geriatric sneakers with hulking rubber soles, dragging their heels onto the subway, and past galloping to their offices wherever they region their anchor-like sneakers and regenerate them with spindly stilettos, made to puncture the solid ceiling and determination their well-heeled selves close into a C suite. Ahem, Working Girl, anyone?

But successful reality, the commuter sneaker is ugly. It’s the scuffed eyesore of a slick-suited look, a beacon of grime, and a bull’s-eye of unsavory clunk. (A ’80s sock shimmied up to the shin is conscionable the heinous cherry connected top!) 

Whenever I deterioration a commuter sneaker, typically my fraying Nike moving sneakers, I cognize that I volition beryllium successful my bureau seat and region them, touching a sneaker that has been everyplace successful the city, from a nationalist bath connected 14th and 8th to a stagnant puddle extracurricular of my home. My commuter sneaker is astir apt the precursor for this era’s bubonic plague, and my hands are each of it. In short, the commuter sneaker is simply a changeless reminder of the unprofessional grime and the grit that comes with the nonrecreational hustle. I don’t privation to beryllium reminded of it!

However, I person nary prime but to gaffe my hooves into a commuter sneaker. Case successful point: Yesterday, I trudged to enactment successful a glorious eBay find: $50-something Tom Ford–era Gucci stiletto boots. But if immoderate bottommost could kill, it would beryllium this one, and I would beryllium the victim. By the extremity of my walk, my feet hurt. No, they were connected fire. I limped to my unfastened bureau desk…no C suite for moi! Not with that bittersweet and bruised gait–and ego!