Baby's First Pair of Mules
I grew up with my dad and for as long as I can remember he deeply despised flip-flops... And a man in flip-flops? That was blasphemy! I was about ten years old when my dad and I were parked on a street and he leaned over to his right where I was sitting in the passenger seat and pointed out of my window...“See that man? What if there is an emergency? Do you think he can run in those flip-flops?"
Having good shoes on when you are out of your home is essential and equivalent to being ready and staying ready as far as my father saw it. When I was old enough to wear heels and drive, I went to pick up my dad for an afternoon out. As he gets into the car, he spots one of my shoes on the passenger side floor. I told him I took my right heel off for a bit to drive more comfortably. Quickly he offered “what if you need to run out of the car for whatever reason? Mami, we have to try to always have our shoes on when we need to have them on.” It is because of this that I never wore flip-flops or anything like it unless it was to throw away the trash or hang at the pool. Flip flops were never real life shoes in my mind.
I say all of that to better help you understand how I could have been in the fashion industry for ten years and just get my first pair of mules, age 29. Mules are essentially slip-on shoes with covered toes and exposed heels, open toe slip-ons are also mules! When I say I got my first pair of mules at age 29, I mean it literally. On the very first afternoon, on the very first day of being twenty-nine, after my nail and hair appointments were fulfilled, and right before dinner, I popped into Bergdorf Goodman for brand new birthday shoes and left with these:
Shoes: Attico
I have to say, there is something considerably special about slipping on shoes when you need to go and casually slipping them off anytime, anywhere.
And yes, maybe you are right, maybe my late arrival to the mule party isn't all my dad's fault. I have some fault too... I never considered mules cute or sexy. I used to think ‘What’s the point of mules? There’s a whole lot of shoe missing.’
Romy at Refinery29 puts it perfectly:
"I’ve heard the mule criticized as categorically unsexy — it does, after all, share a name with an animal whose most notable characteristic is its inability to reproduce. (Disappointingly, while both types of mule are hybrids, the shoe actually takes its name from mulleus calceus, footwear worn by magistrates in Ancient Rome that has nothing to do with today’s style). But what mules lack in sex appeal they make up for in cool factor. And what’s more sexy than a woman with the confidence to rock such Man Repellers as midi-heeled slides while sliding into your DMs?"
I love these shoes so much for my first pair of mules that I’ve been wearing them almost everywhere and paired them with almost anything...
Roadside in Denver, Colorado en route to dinner
Dress: Carven
Saturday morning in my pajamas.
As an added bonus, here is me with my new Karl Lagerfeld mules from Marshalls.
Please note that while slipping on mules is easy, keeping the heels of our feet hydrated is hard as fu*k. But, if there is anything I learned in my twenty nine years of life is that you win some and you lose some. Dry heels or not, please consider me a new member of team Mules.