Commuter footwear

As soon as Spring shows its reluctant and inconsistent face, the dilemma begins. What do you put on your feet to travel to work? I do know of people who persist in wearing boots even through a 30 degree heat and who claim that their feet don't sweat. They are lying, as anyone within a 10 feet radius can tell them if they could only remove their face masks for long enough to do so without asphyxiating from the whiff. But in any case I'm not one of them. I wear boots with my suits and dresses very happily all the way through the Winter. But for the last week at least the temperature has hit double figures and that is the time to jettison that most hated women's garment of all time - tights (no garment more hated in the history of footwear, other than, perhaps, the corset) - and reopen the existential worry about what to replace the boots with. In New York they don't have this problem. Rain or shine, snow or heatwave, women happily don their Keds and trip their way to Grand Central Station. How they manage to pull this look off without looking frumpy and hopeless remains a mystery to me. I think it could be that if all women wore Ann Taylor Loft two piece jackets and pants with their Keds or Converse or Nike women or whatever the latest NY commuter footwear trend is, then it doesn't look so weird. But also, it's not so easy to take your example from NY women commuters. I mean, these are the same women who are in the gym at 4am and out on the street with their lattes by 5 looking as fresh as a daisy. I'm not exaggerating about this one - I know this from experience. I was in NY staying in upper Manhattan for a meeting a few years back. I got up at around 4 the day after I arrived, crippled with jet lag, and decided it would be a really good idea to go and swim some lengths to restore my equilibrium. It'll be empty at this time of the morning, I thought, grabbing my towel. I get down to the pool and find a sea of female Speedo clad, perfectly formed, buffed and manicured bodies. It was one of the biggest shocks of my life. No, London commuting women cannot compete with that impossibly high bar. We are the ones with chipped nails, shaggy hair, thermos flasks and weeping mascara. So, what is a girl to do? I have experimented with leather Converse shoes with black short socks. These make me look like an alarming Amazonian PE teacher. I have tried just wearing my gym shoes. These, when I wear them with my work dresses, make me look like I have had a bad day at the Krispy Kreme outlet. What is it about gym shoes that look so right with shorts and lycra, and so horribly wrong with daywear? Fashion magazines are having one of those delusional fads they tend to have at least five or six of each season, and this one is about convincing us that even Victoria Beckham is wearing sneakers with her dresses. I don't buy it. Problem is, I'm too vain not to care about it. You would think it wouldn't matter at all what people look like in the train to work. But it absolutely does. I think it's because it's at least 30 minutes sat opposite a row of 8-10 people who have nothing else to do so they stare at you. If they're going to do that then the least you can do in return is look like you made an effort. And this pressure is as nothing compared to what you want to look like as you walk into, and out of, your office.  It is completely anti-London to wear sneakers to work. Even if you had a flashing sign on your head that said, THESE ARE FOR MY COMMUTE, you would not be immune to career-ending raised eyebrows over your footwear. So the answer is to search out and purchase footwear that is clumpy enough to withstand whatever the tube may throw at you - overcrowding, unwanted groping, unexpected train breakdowns, delays, malfunctions and accidents (call me paranoid if you want but I never descend into the tube without adequate preparation for having to exit it again, at speed), while still surviving the Acceptable Office Look. In the summer, this would be open toe shoes (not sandals! That is Too Woodstock!), which have that trendy t-bar schoolgirlish practicality, but with just enough of a heel to save the legs from winning a Best Lumberjack competition. Such a pair of shoes is one in a million and requires an exhaustive search of department stores and internet. Is such effort really worth it, I hear you say. Hell, yes.