Welcome back, wedges
The nostalgic shoe trend is ready for lift-off
I’ve wanted to wear high heels since the seventh grade. My mother had other ideas, so wedges became our compromise, something to give me that grownup height I craved, without totally ruining my back alignment.
In the years since middle school, I’ve come to associate wedges with vacations (see: rope-covered espadrilles) or the very avant-garde (see: early aughts McQueen and Margiela). But the latest crop of wedged footwear appeals for all the right reasons. It looks cool, modern and contemporary thanks to sleek finishes like croc-effect leather, square toes and minimal straps.
Their resurgence is also largely predictable — history has proven that shoes go up in times of turmoil (from the Depression to the ’70s and even the recession of the early aughts).
Still, heels are a tough sell right now, no matter how badly we want to dress up post-pandemic. Wedges, then, are once again here to offer a compromise between pretending that things are getting back to normal and embracing a more realistic post-pandemic fashion ethos. Because sometimes, much like an awkward 12-year-old, we just want to stand a little taller.