Of Shoes Lost and Found

Is That Aubergine?
Originally uploaded by Laura.

My favorite shoes are a pair of deep purple Sonia Rykiel pumps with a T-bar strap and a toe that is a mesmerizing hybrid of pointed and round. They had been abandoned on the discount rack of a department store, unglamorously bound with an elastic. It was one of those in-the-store moments where my heart rate changed a little, where I thought Something must be wrong.

Truthfully, I have no gripping affinity for Sonia. To my mind, her clothes conjure images of aged socialites in the eighties and endless sweaters. But these shoes. It was maybe their delightful color (subtle, almost metallic), or their obvious workmanship (again, the lines of that wonderful toe) but this one time, and for that price, I could make an exception and welcome her into my life.

At 8:30 pm last evening, I left those shoes, wrapped in a plastic Associated Supermarket bag, under a chair in a burger joint in Park Slope. Also in the bag were two plastic lunch containers — empty — and a pair of somewhat less-beloved, but certainly no less valuable Givenchy flats. If you consider the retail value alone, this is more or less like leaving your iPod on a table in the food court of Penn Station.

My boyfriend, reasonable as ever, tried to talk me down from my immediate panic when I realized, three hours and 15 blocks later, that I was a bag short. "First of all, any would-be thief would have to be your size. Second of all, (s)he probably wouldn't even know what (s)he was looking at."

Except this is New York, and this is a place where thieves — maybe especially thieves — know their Givenchy when they see it. We ran to the burger place, strutting through the cold, and for an instant, I tried to jump-start the mourning process in my mind. I convinced myself that they were lost forever, that they were already halfway posted on eBay or pawned somewhere on the Slope. And then, an instant later, I convinced myself that it didn't matter. They're shoes, after all. There is enough Sonia Rykiel in the world to go around more than once.

When we arrived, the burger joint was closed by the bar was open. A bus boy smiled when he saw me and handed me the bag, which he'd been keeping on the counter. He had tied a knot in the top, to make sure nothing slipped out.

Reality Check for the Working Girl

The Comfort-Worn Favorite
Originally uploaded by Laura.

I am one of those girls who carries her shoes to work. Fashionistas will tell you not to do this, that it's unprofessional to sit at your desk peeling your socks off and bearing your fuzz-covered toes but I don't really care. For me, it's a matter of protecting my shoes, not my feet, although I can certainly traverse Brooklyn's waterfront cobblestones a lot more easily in Keds than in my favorite pumps.

Last week, I was called on my fashion faux pas on West 3rd Street by a complete stranger. I was wearing a pair of very green Chuck Taylors that bear a very distinctive hole in each pinky toe. Looking back, these aren't exactly street-ready. Or light-of-day ready. But I love them like family and wore them with — I know — a red dress with the intention of changing at the office. A white coat served as the great neutralizer and prevented any Christmas tree comparisons.

I was halfway up the block when a homeless man rolled by me in his wheelchair. He asked me for change and then looked down and saw them. He said, "Whooo, look at those!" His tone did not strike me as complementary.

He had no legs.

Home Fashion

Rainbow Bright
Originally uploaded by Laura.

I go home to my mother’s house in Massachusetts with a bag of dirty clothes. She confiscates it, begins untangling tights and socks, and says, “This isn’t bad. Your sister brings three times as much, usually.”

She throws it all into our washing machine, which is the size of a small Volvo, and leaves me with nothing to wear for the rest of the weekend. I open up a closet in what was my bedroom. My mother has painted it, moved her books onto the shelves. It is her office now in mauve and red with her sleek new computer set up against one wall, like a spruce-up show on TLC. My clothes, the ones that didn’t fit into my suitcase when I moved to New York City, have been relegated to a single garment bag on one side of the closet. Nothing fits me anymore except a pair of jeans with a broken zipper.

“Go in Stefanie’s room,” she says. “She left an entire wardrobe behind and still had enough clothes to take a full one with her.”

My sister moved west to the Berkshires last autumn. If you open up her armoire, you’d never know it. She left behind stacks of sweaters, yoga pants, a full rack of shoes. A sweater catches my eye. It is bulky-knit in rainbow colors, like something you’d wear to milk the cows but which probably came from Urban Outfitters. It is the kind of thing I would never wear in New York.

The jeans with the broken zipper are bootcut, which, per my latest issue of Vogue, are so two years ago that they’re almost back in style. I arrange the zipper so it stays put and realize — the bliss of concrete comparison — that I was born for bootcut. Slim leg jeans are a nightmare for girls with hips. So we compromise. We get the ones at Old Navy that are cut for real women, but they don’t look right. They will never camouflage the reality that we are not Gemma Ward, that we like ice cream, that everyday life rolls in curves and not in straight lines.

I wear the jeans and the rainbow sweater and have nothing to put on my feet until I inspect Stefanie’s abandoned shoe rack and see them. They are amazing. They are the ugliest pair of shoes I have ever seen. They are not sneakers, per say, but they aren’t obviously anything else either. They have laces. And they are pink and green paisley with silver metallic toes. They are what you would wear to a disco on the moon. They have big, blessed rubber soul.

I wear them all weekend. I wear everything all weekend, the sweater, the jeans with the broken zipper, and my sister’s paisley George Clinton shoes. The only people who see me are members of my own family. Away from the city, I watch TV, I raid the fridge, I eat my grandmother’s lentils and pasta. I am someone else. I am the rainbow connection.