In life, there are a few notable moments that reroute the course. Leaving school, moving out – or, in my case, a very tall and glamorous woman offering me a guiding principle at the tender age of ten: “Liv, whatever you do, you must always buy the shoes.”
It’s perhaps the sole piece of advice I’ve clung to as an adult, with an ever-proliferating pile of jelly flats, ballerinas, mary-janes and cowboy boots now serving as stone-cold evidence. So what if I haven’t worn those banana-shaped heels in more than five years? Unless I decide to undergo some sort of unusual bone-lengthening procedure, my feet aren’t going to change in size – and so their day, too, will come. And when it does, I’ll be glad I added them to the archive, rather than subscribing to the popular capsule wardrobe mindset. (Although, I’ve never managed to practice restraint when faced with any item of clothing I like the look of.)
Olivia Allen
Another thing I’ve accumulated slightly too enthusiastically? Jeans. For years, I had no more than two pairs on rotation – and then, within the space of six months, I somehow ended up with a wardrobe overflowing with denim in every imaginable wash and cut. And so, when I discovered there was a brand in London – Florrie – that actively transforms surplus denim into the kind of heels that would make Carrie Bradshaw weep, I was once again reminded of the sage counsel I received as a child.
Florrie was founded by Florrie Dowley – a former Aquazzura designer – in February 2024, with the intention of creating something a little more in step with British style. “I didn’t recognise anyone I knew in the customer Aquazzura was designing for,” she tells me over dinner. “The London girl wants something she can walk in, go on the tube in, wear with jeans.” In other words: laid-back, wearable, chic. Even better is that they’re sustainable.
The idea to use second-hand denim came straight from Dowley’s own wardrobe, which was cram-full with just enough jeans to dress an entire Cowboy Carter stadium. “With some careful cutting, ironing and stitching by artisans in our Florence atelier, the first Lucia mule was born from a pair of old Levi’s.” That initial experiment has now grown into a signature of the brand, with each shoe crafted from donated denim. “We received so many pairs of jeans that we have enough for hundreds more shoes,” Dowley adds.
On Wednesdays, we wear double denim.
Morgan Cronin-Webb
Road testing the Lucia Mules.
Morgan Cronin-Webb
To prove the point, Florrie offered to take a pair of my old crusties and rework them into the most perfect pair of summer slingbacks I’ve ever seen. And while the business isn’t yet at the scale to provide this bespoke service for everyone – I think Dowley took pity on me – the brand does continue to run a healthy donation scheme, meaning you can rest easy in the knowledge that each new heel purchased started out as someone else’s cast-offs.
To that end: if you’re a shoe lover with hoarder tendencies (and a growing conscience), consider this article a sign to give your old indigos a new lease of life. I, for one, am thrilled. Instead of another pair of jeans taking up space, I now have another shoe taking up space – which, I think, is exactly what Carrie Bradshaw would want.