By Editor,Esther Walker
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How a flat became the ‘statement’ shoe for It-girls at Fashion Week
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By ESTHER WALKER FOR YOU MAGAZINE
Published: 08:01 BST, 4 October 2025 | Updated: 08:01 BST, 4 October 2025
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‘Oh no,’ said my husband, ‘not those again.’ He was looking at my putty-coloured rubber pool slides from the Australian brand Archies, which I have worn every day since May. It being autumn and too chilly for open toes, I think he was hoping they would be replaced. But no. I simply accessorised them with a pair of matching putty-coloured socks.
I don’t know what to say, except the borderline scandalous comfort of slipping my 44-year-old feet into the squishy cocoon of these slides is a siren call I can’t resist.
Street style at Copenhagen Fashion Week
But everyone is at it. I walk a lot in my daily life and I’d say only one woman in 50 I see is wearing any sort of heel. Take the front rows at the recent Copenhagen Fashion Week, where editors and It-girls wore anything but heels, choosing ballet flats, trainers and – most popularly – black leather flip-flops instead. This is reflected in buying habits: figures from online shoppers at John Lewis show a 28 per cent decrease in searches for ‘heels’ in the year to June 2025. M&S has seen sales of heels slip so low that flats make up 77 per cent of its new autumn/winter shoe collection, and of its handful of kitten-heeled styles none is higher than 4.5cm.
Street style at Copenhagen Fashion Week
When I met my husband, I was 27 and exclusively wore high heels. I had them in black, white, gold and brown – strappy, spiky, studded. If I wasn’t in heels, I was barefoot; trainers were strictly for the gym. At 15 I’d started wearing my glamorous elder sister’s discarded heeled boots, which were a size too big. At 16 I got my own: they had a block heel and elasticated straps and were profoundly dowdy. But they made me feel like Jessica Rabbit.
Street style at Copenhagen Fashion Week
High heels became a non-negotiable. They signalled to the world that you were a grown-up. Then in 1998 came Sex And The City. It set a new standard for many things: cocktails as fashion accessories, multiple partners as a lifestyle and heels as essentials for striding down the street. I was good at walking in heels – I didn’t totter or stagger. So what happened to me? What happened to all of us?
Street style at Copenhagen Fashion Week
Well, a few things, the most significant of which was the then head of super-chic French brand Celine, Phoebe Philo, taking a bow at the end of her A/W 2011 show in a pair of white leather Adidas Stan Smith trainers. ‘That was a watershed moment,’ says fashion editor Harriet Walker. ‘Trainers worn not for sport or with leggings but very deliberately with tailored trousers. That juxtaposition looked so much cooler and more nonchalant than heels.’ It proved to be pivotal. Philo looked so incredibly chic, relaxed yet in charge, in her all-black outfit topped off with a dazzlingly white pair of tennis shoes. We all wanted a piece of that.
Street style at Copenhagen Fashion Week
Shortly after, I left office life and started working from home. Wandering about the house in a stiletto seemed a little strange. Then I had children – and kids and high heels just don’t mix. The physical demands of looking after under-fives mean you are constantly exhausted and in mild pain. The last thing you need is aching arches.
Fashion and feminism moved on, and the idea that women at work ‘should’ dress a certain way seemed absurd. Today it feels borderline perverted for women to jeopardise their lumbar spine for an item of footwear.
Street style at Copenhagen Fashion Week
The fashion academic Stacey Heale believes something bigger is going on. ‘For decades, high heels symbolised sexual power, professionalism and desirability, but they’ve lost their cultural power because they no longer align with how women live,’ she says.
Back in 2014 a friend who’s a Google executive told me she never wore heels at work because she was ‘too busy’. She favoured a pair of Lanvin ballet flats, but the last time I saw her she was wearing pink Adidas Sambas. She is far from alone: once ‘smart’ trainers entered the fashion lexicon, women in power embraced them. The message trickled down that hectic, important women wore flats. Perhaps heels for a party, but even then… In recent years, I have worn smart dresses with trainers. And I can get home without risking blisters.
Street style at Copenhagen Fashion Week
I do wonder if high heels’ chief proponent, Sex And The City star Sarah Jessica Parker, may have actually contributed to their downfall. In the final series of the SATC spin-off, And Just Like That… her character Carrie totters about (even alone in her own home) in an increasingly silly selection of heels. It looks wrong and old-fashioned – a bit like the series itself, which was finally binned this summer.
But back to the pool slides. To wear something so dumpy and utilitarian simply because it suits your lifestyle is, to me, the ultimate declaration of confidence. Having said that, I wouldn’t wear my slides/socks combo out for lunch with my husband. Or to a meeting.
Not in the putty colour, anyway. Perhaps navy?
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How a flat became the ‘statement’ shoe for It-girls at Fashion Week
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