A Little Sole-Searching? The Story of a Pair of Boots

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I recently had these boots resoled and reheeled (a dying art in a world of fast fashion), and as part of my commitment to make/mend/thrift, I felt these boots encapsulated a lot of those values as well as some other, nonsartorial, things.

I’m pretty sure my mother bought these Robert Clergerie boots for me at Bergdorf Goodman in 1995/1996.  I remember that the ladyfriend and I were still maintaining separate apartments and more importantly, separate finances.

For years my mother and I have had a semi-annual date to go shopping in New York, a tradition that has lasted into the almost 11 years I’ve been in Hamilton.  On each of these trips, my mother buys something for me.  My receptivity to this has varied over the years.  There was a time when I didn’t want her to buy me anything because I thought it undermined my independence and sense of adulthood; there was a time when it made me anxious because I knew she’d feel the day was a failure if I didn’t have something to show for it; there was the passive-aggressive phase when I tried to maximize my haul.  Over the past twenty or so years, I’ve come to a more nuanced understanding of this dynamic.

--> But in ‘95/’96 I was in the early years of my relationship both with my ladyfriend and living in NYC.  Shopping with my mother let me feel, for an afternoon at least, that I was not struggling financially in a demanding city (my mother had initially been against my move) and that I was really the woman I presented to the world i.e. able to afford her well-appointed life.  It was important that I had a moment where I felt like the concept I had of myself (yes, fostered at that time by my mother) was authentic to me.