Sometimes I wish I was a kid again. Summers were almost excruciatingly long, composed of woods and lakes and beaches and camp and foraging and friends and boys and gossip and ice cream and growing up. Now summer means working, with a BBQ and a beach day peppered in. And its fast, so fast that it’s over before you even realize it was summer. If it wasn’t for the painfully hot weather in NYC, I would have no idea. One of my favorite memories of summer has always been back to school shopping. From about 8 years old to 13, I was away every summer. I barely saw my parents, brother and sister, and basically came back from camp right before school was about to start.
Back to school shopping was always hurried, rummaging through the already torn apart aisles of various stores, looking for binders and pens and pencils and folders that were deemed cool by that year’s standards. Shopping for clothing was basically the same, I always had just a weekend to go before school started and would run around various stores with my sister attempting to find things between the ripped apart shelves of stores that had been exhausted by other preteen girls weeks before. This might not seem like a good time to you, but it was everything to me. After spending over two months away, being able to hang out with my older sister was amazing. Although looking back now, I was a huge brat when it came to picking out clothing. Luckily, she put up with me!
I might not be a kid anymore (or even close) but a little pre-fall shopping fun can still be had. The number one fall purchase I need to make at this point is a good pair of flat boots. Every time I get a pair of boots I basically wear them out to the point that they can’t even be fixed if I took them to a cobbler. So come fall, I’m on the hunt for a good pair of stomping boots.
As a teen, docs were my go to. When I first purchased them, they were so stiff I got blisters every time I wore them. I tried everything to break them in, I even had my dad run them over with his car ( I’m not joking). It took a while but when they finally did get broken in, they were like butter. Seriously, they molded to my feet.
Now that I’m in my 20′s, I’m looking for something with a doc martin feel without the chunkiness of actual doc martins (docs are not too appropriate for an office job). Maybe this will be the year I don’t wear one pair of boots until they’re literally falling apart.
The JC’s are cute, leather and affordable (hello sale!). I give Jeffrey Campbell a hard time about some of the company’s ways, but I still support the fact that his shoes are affordable and fairly well made. I wish that he wouldn’t copy-cat some of his designs, but it’s not a deal breaker for me..yet. It may seem hypocritical and maybe it is, but in the end these boots are $150 versus another designer whose similar shoes may sell for $350 and up ($1200 Golden Goose anyone?)
Bernhard Willhelm x Camper boots. Ah, these boots. Completely and disgustingly out of my price range, but I love them. They remind me of boots someone from the movie Hackers would wear, or a club kid partying it up at limelight circa 1993.
Yeah, that’s all I can come up with. It’s time to take this search offline, and get myself into a store, rummaging the aisles like it’s 1999 and I’m 13 years old.
@WendyB 1993 was probably the tail end…My feet were tough enough for docs at one point in my life..but now not so much anymore..sad
My feet aren’t tough enough for Docs.
Were people still going to Limelight in ’93?
I just don’t see the reason for him to copy-cat, he has so many designs that are similar, which is fine, but then he’ll come out with a shoe that is so close to the original that it’s just like, COME ON.
I think once my niece and nephew are old enough to really appreciate back to school shopping I may have to steal them away from my sister and live vicariously through them
Those post made me miss back to school shopping! I would feel so excited for the upcoming school year with my fresh binders, unused erasers, and new mechanical pencils haha.
I feel the same way about Jeffrey Campbell, begrudgingly accept that it’s the option that fits within my budget.