Made for walking
It was 4:21 in the morning in New York when the message arrived. "What were those boots you were wearing the ones you said were comfortable to walk around the city in?"
My daughter-in-law had spent Christmas in Madrid. She had watched me walk really walk, the way you walk a city you know and love from one end to the other, day after day, without complaint, without stopping, without the particular grimace that comes from shoes that begin to cost you something by early afternoon.
She noticed. And when she landed back in New York, before the jet lag had fully lifted, she wrote to ask.
That message is, I think, the finest review a boot can receive.
Finding the right boot had taken time. I had tried others beautiful ones, the kind that look exactly right on a shelf or in a photograph. But I had a specific requirement that beauty alone could not meet: I needed to walk long distances through Madrid without feeling the city in my feet by midday.
Weight was the problem. So many boots that appear clean and considered are simply too heavy to live in. You don't notice at first only two hours in, when a quiet tiredness settles in the ankle and begins to spread. By evening, you have paid for the aesthetics with your body.
"I wanted to feel light. I knew I would be crossing the city from one side to the other, and the boot had to carry me not the other way around."
The Sessùn Ainwick is made of leather in Portugal. Dark brunette not quite black, not quite brown, but that particular shade that belongs to both worlds and asks nothing of you in terms of coordination. It goes with a skirt, a dress, any trouser. It is the boot you stop thinking about, which is perhaps the highest compliment.
The design is bold and clean. No unnecessary details, no decorative seams or buckles that will date in two seasons. A Chelsea silhouette, low block heel, the kind of shape that has existed for decades because it simply works. I wore them almost every day from October through February. They are put away now, waiting for autumn. I find myself looking forward to October partly because of this.
The second pair is a different conversation entirely.
Black, croc-embossed leather a texture you notice up close and a square block heel that sits at exactly the right height. Not tall enough to demand your attention, not so low that the evening loses its shape. The Gypqueen. Mid-calf, which means a flash of sock or a dark tight showing above the shaft exactly right, and very French without being costume.
I took them to Paris. I wore them every night with a black midi skirt, with a dress, and on one particular afternoon, with my cream corduroy suit from Rag & Bone that looked French without trying. The kind of outfit that feels inevitable only after you have put it on.
The square heel is what makes everything possible. It gives you the height and the line of a dressed boot without the instability that sends you into a taxi rather than onto the street. In Paris, you walk. You walk to dinner, you walk back from the bar, you walk through an afternoon that becomes an evening without deciding to. The boot has to hold. An afternoon in a Parisian apartment. The boots entirely at home.
There is a photograph from that trip taken without warning, the way the best ones are. I am crossing the Place de la Bastille at dusk. The Opéra is golden behind me. I am in the cream jacket and the black skirt, mid-stride, not posing, just going somewhere. The boots are doing exactly what they are supposed to do: nothing. They have disappeared into the walk.
"The right shoe disappears. It becomes part of how you move. Not something you are managing, but something that is simply, quietly, yours."
This is what Sessùn understands, I think. Their shoes are made for a woman who is going somewhere. Not performing going somewhere actually going. Through a city, through a season, through an afternoon that keeps extending because she is comfortable enough to say yes to whatever comes next.
Two boots. Two cities. One very specific way of moving through the world.
And then there was a December morning in Salamanca.
Every Christmas, Vogue Spain and the Barrio de Salamanca close several streets and fill them with flower vendors. Fresh winter arrangements, Christmas wreaths, branches of eucalyptus and pine. I went early, the way you go to markets when you want the best of what's there. I bought flowers. I was walking home, arms full of paper-wrapped stems, when someone stopped me just before a crossing.
They said they were photographing street style for Vogue. They asked if they could take my picture. I said yes.
The photograph appeared on Vogue Spain's Instagram. In it you can see the mustard coat, the houndstooth skirt, the cat-eye glasses, the Christmas flowers held against my chest. The Vogue backdrop behind me. A Tuesday morning in my neighbourhood that became something else entirely.
"You cannot see the boots in the photograph. They were there anyway the reason I walked to the market, the reason I was still walking home without complaint, the reason I said yes to whatever the morning offered."
That is the only thing I ask of a shoe. That it disappears so completely into the life that when the moment arrives, the unexpected one, the one you didn't plan you are simply ready.
Street style for Vogue Spain. Mercado de las Flores, Barrio de Salamanca, December 2025
Madrid Autumn & Winter
The Ainwick
Dark brunette leather, made in Portugal. Chelsea silhouette, low block heel. The boot for walking seriously light enough to forget, considered enough to wear with everything.
Paris Evening into Night
The Gypqueen
Black croc-embossed leather, mid-calf, square block heel at the right height. Dressy enough for a gilded chair in a Parisian apartment. Sturdy enough to walk home after.
What I look for in a boot worth keeping
Weight above everything. Pick the boot up before you put it on. If it surprises you, put it down. A heavy boot is a beautiful trap.
A colour that belongs to two worlds. The dark brunette that reads as black at night and brown in daylight. You stop making decisions in the morning.
A heel you can actually walk on. The square heel at the right height. Not a fashion statement, structural decision. Your evening should not end early because of your shoes.
No details that will age. Buckles, chains, and embellishments belong to a season. A clean silhouette belongs to a decade.
Made to last. Both pairs: Sessùn, leather, made in Portugal. The boots I wore through an entire Madrid autumn and every Paris evening without once wishing I had chosen differently.
