Spring steps: the season’s best shoe trends with real staying power

Now is not the time to throw a blind eye at your footwear choices. Or so the word on the street was at New York fashion week last month, as swathes of the season’s best shoes decorated the streets. There was everything from ultra platform heels and chic ballet flats, to limited edition styles and sportswear favourites. To help you cut through the noise and pin down the shoes worth your investment – this season and well into the next – we’ve the perfect footwear edit to get you started.

Put pep into your two-step

We’ve previously pinned down cowboy boots as one of the season’s best investments, and now we’re here to reaffirm that point. The best thing about this style is that you can lean into the western influence as much, or as little, as you like. Go the full way with a knee-high style, embroidered stitching, and nubuck leather, or opt for a pair that reinvents the traditional shape without the bells and whistles. Our top pick lands somewhere in the middle, with Nodaleto’s two-tone leather cowboy boots being the best example.

The double duty shoe

Mary Janes have had a major rebirth of late, and the new style is somewhere between playground-meets-biker-boots, and designers are running the full gamut of the definition. There was Coach’s white ballet flat styles, Chopova Lowena chain-embellished versions, and Simone Rocha’s heavily embellished platform styles on the spring-summer runways. Loewe’s bumper-tube leather mary jane loafers have our vote for their comfort, wearability, and dress-up or dress-down appeal.

The soccer trainers

This footwear staple never really left the scene, it just got added to the wardrobes of street style icons du jour, namely Bella Hadid and Hailey Bieber. The outcome is Adidas Sambas appearing in every second TikTok styling video, and it’s probably why the Adidas Handball Spezials are consistently sold out every time we check for our size. Still, we preserve because they are a forever shoe that won’t date.

All that glitters

Metallics often divide opinions. Some claim tackiness, others claim statement-making. We rally behind the latter, given the ability of a sleek, metallic heel to disco-up an otherwise neutral outfit. Theo Wargo’s new season collection featured the epitome of such, and Prada is regularly partial to a metallic style too, such as our pick below.

Coastal Grandma 2.0

From its humble start as a Dutch footwear staple, to today’s favourite coastal grandma shoe, clogs are a footwear staple beloved for their reinvention appeal. This season, the style is elevated in height and its seeing lots of buckles, straps, and stitching details. From the luxury to the high street market, this is a shoe that every brand is happy to reinvent, and one that we’re happy to add to cart.