Biker Boots Are (Almost) Wardrobe Heroes

Posted by Styloko

Former Sunday Times Style Features Editor Ruby Warrington recently relocated to New York, where she’s now based as a US correspondent for the paper.

In her weekly Styloko column, Ny-loko, she dissects NY style through British eyes – will she ever dress like one of them?

A reformed shopaholic, her wardrobe mantra these days is ‘quality over quantity’ (check out her Lust List), while her idea of shopping heaven is her new West Village apartment, complete with walk-in wardrobe.

Carrie Bradshaw, eat your heart out.
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Walking through the Meatpacking district the other day, a stab of homesickness propelled me into All Saints – I used to live a stone’s throw from the giant flagship in London’s Spitalfields. But quite what inspired my knee-jerk purchase of yet another pair of black biker boots (see scrapbook) I have no idea.

There are already three variations on the biker theme in my shoedrobe, and with temperatures regularly hitting the low-90s in Manhattan (sorry!) what I actually need is sandals. But since when has ‘need’ been the key motivator in a woman’s fashion choices? Ahem.

The Universe obviously approved, however, because the very next day the heavens opened, the temperature plummeted, and my shiny new boots were just the ticket for lunch in Union Square with a fashion PR friend. “I wish we could swap shoes,” she lamented, gingerly stepping between the puddles in a directional pair of metallic blue wedges.

I splashed home smug as a bug, deciding they’d also be perfect, in a grunge revival kind of way, for a trip down to Brooklyn that evening. Worn with a flea market dress and vintage Robert Cary Williams army jacket, heavy black kohl around my eyes – “I feel like an Olsen twin circa 2004,” I whispered to my husband as we sped south on the L train. Not a bad look for Willamsberg.

It was only much, much later that night, several triangle-shaped drinks in, that I wished I’d broken them in more slowly. New boots always give me blisters.