What Summer Shoes Do I Wear If I Have Ugly Toes?

I find my feet are truly ugly. The toes have a foul gangly curl, in the shape of Quasimodo’s hunched back. Due 

to running, I’m missing toenails, while others are compacted like a crepe cake. I once had a Ukrainian 

pedicurist go at my heels with an electrical sander. In short, my toes are the spawn of Satan and no one should 

see them.

Sometimes my feet can be saved by a pedicure, though amid COVID-19 I won’t be getting them done anytime 

soon. (And before you ask, yes I’ve tried and tried to tame them myself, but these suckers need professional 

help.) Now, the weather is getting hotter and my feet need to breathe. Who wants to slosh around in sweaty 

sneakers all day? Yet, I can’t wear sandals and harass people with a hostile digit. My little piggies need to be 

shrouded and far from human eyes, but I don’t want to live in suffocating footwear anymore. What’s a girl 

with divorced-dad feet to do but ask her colleagues for help sourcing shoes for people who don’t want to 

show their toes.

Vogue market editor Madeline Fass had some ideas about summer footwear that covers the toes. She prefers 

full coverage for her feet, including the backs too. Her choice is a leather loafer by Hereu. And while leather 

can seem like a sweaty mistake, Fass’s version includes cutouts for, yes, that breathability factor. “After wearing 

heavy loafers all winter and into spring, I wanted something that would give me that familiar silhouette but in 

a lighter, summery version,” she says. “I just hope they don’t give me weird tan lines!” Another tongue-in-

cheek iteration on the full-coverage shoe could be Loewe’s toe shoes. Those babies are cotton, crocheted, and 

have the images of very cute feet on them, toe rings included. Why show your own feet when you can just 

wear someone else’s pretty feet? Seems like a good idea to me.

Further on my quest, I spoke with Vogue’s visual director Samantha Adler, who is going through the same 

phalangeal crisis. As a solution, she bought a party-in-the-back, business-in-the-front shoe: a Croc. But it’s not 

just any Croc, this one comes with a 2.4-inch platform and is titled the Women’s Crocs Classic Bae Clog. Adler 

told me that she loves an ugly flatform shoe, “but all I have are deeply impractical for right now. The platform 

Croc is the sort of perfect hybrid between functional and fashion, and I can actually walk a few miles in them. 

They also hide my unpedicured feet.” Seems like Adler isn’t the only one opting for the fashion Crocs: 

Currently, most of the colors, which range from sherbet orange to classic black, are all sold out except for size 

5 and 11.

I have to say, I aligned most with Adler’s ugly flatform shoe philosophy. I am someone who likes a big ole 

clunker. You know, that can’t-miss-it beacon of hunk giving the body some extra gravitational pull toward the 

earth’s scalding core, that also says, “I’ll never have sex again!” From a geometry standpoint, a subject that I 

failed in high school, there is something about anchoring the body’s silhouette with cloggy heft that evens the 

figure’s proportions, which is ultimately satisfying. I can easily imagine these rubber clogs paired with kicky 

cropped pants and a midriff-baring tank top. Also, I like the concept of having my heels kissed by the sweet 

sunrays of summer. They deserve to see the light. And yes, I promise I will buff them.