What I wore this week: white boots
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Loading... - Ava Candace
- 27 Nov 2020
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White shoes. So practical, in a British winter! Said no one, ever. And yet, a pair of white boots is probably the sensible fashion purchase of the moment. This is the refresh button your look needs, a one-retail-hit wonder to give your new-season wardrobe a kick. They don’t have to be high-heeled, or expensive. Although you will need to get nimble around puddles.
In the days when we wore black tights with absolutely everything, a black shoe made perfect sense, and there was seldom call for anything else. But through some unholy Anna Wintour/climate change pincer movement, matt black opaque hosiery loosened its stranglehold on our wardrobe. Black tights call for black shoes – anything else and it gets a bit West End musical – but once you get into a bare leg or a sock, a black shoe can look as if you are adhering to school uniform rules.
Breaking out of a black shoe rut is an instant moderniser. A man in a suit with a pair of white Stan Smiths, rather than formal black shoes. A pale shoe can dial down a cocktail-hour dress to work at lunchtime, a trick often used by the Duchess of Cambridge in her nude courts. The white ankle boot is a compromise between the nude high heel (bit naff now, sorry) and the flat white trainer (still perfectly acceptable, but no longer a power move). It is equal parts glamorous and quirky.
What to wear it with? There is pretty much nothing in this season’s wardrobe which won’t work with a white ankle boot, actually. White boots are excellent with a pair of high‑waisted jeans, which are hard to pull off with flat shoes but can suddenly go very disco if paired with high courts or sandals, which isn’t always what you want. They can take a pencil skirt from balance-sheet to Balenciaga catwalk. And they are brilliant, most of all, with dark midi‑length skirts. These longer skirts are a modern classic, but when you add dark boots and a coat, you become a Downton maid off to the village in her hobble boots for a bag of flour and some lard. A white boot instantly updates you by a whole century. Sounds crazy, but it works. That’s the white ankle boot for you.
