Ode to a colourful trainer

I have been thinking a lot lately about my favourite pair of trainers.

I’m pretty sure this thought came from me looking anywhere but at my computer screen when in the library last week until my eyes came to rest on my shoes- which are of course in dire need of a wash.

I’ve had something of a tumultuous relationship with these shoes, a much bolder colour than I would have thought I could pull off and when I got them for Christmas I must admit I was slightly apprehensive to wear them outside. Aside from the new shoe fear that everyone experiences when your new shoes are so damn fresh that you can’t bear the thought of getting the slightest speck of the great outdoors on them, which I guess is rather counterintuitive as shoes are supposed to protect your feet not vice versa. I must admit I experienced a shadow of fear as the bright, mint green poked through the wrapping paper,  that I would not suit these shoes or rather they would not suit me. I was sure that the many people that undoubtedly walk up and down my road just waiting to judge the footwear of those they pass, would sense my fear and peek through the living room window to see me holding a pair of trainers that were so obviously out of my league.

After this strange sort of self-doubting monologue concluded in my head I put the trainers back in their box and didn’t think much of them for the next few days until I had recovered from everyone’s favourite post-christmas food coma and decided I should venture outside to check it was still there. Obviously as soon as I stepped out of the front door I forgot all about my crazy millennial trainer drama (the clux of a first-world problem am I right?) because they were just shoes and I went about my business barely remembering I was wearing such an outrageous item at all.  It seems crazy to me now that what are probably my most worn pair of shoes entered my wardrobe with such negative expectations floating above them. I wear them probably every other day now, they take me to pilates when I can’t find my gym trainers, they finish an outfit when i’m trying to be an ‘I just woke up like this and didn’t even think about my outfit’ edgy youth, they dragged me to lectures I really didn’t want to go to but I was paying 9 grand a year and should have probably gotten my act together as it was third year, they also  helped me jump straight of a cliff (recreationally) into the Mallorcan sea, which as a great hater of heights was quite the achievement for me. What I guess I’m trying to say is I don’t like the amount of pressure we amount to clothes for looking too bold or too much or too different for us to possibly think about wearing. At the end of the day they’re just clothes they don’t say anything, they tend to be voiceless material (bar irritating singing christmas jumpers) so don’t be afraid to wear something outside of your usual fashion comfort zone. For me my statement was scary green trainers, for you it might be a jumper you can’t tell is vintage or frumpy, it might be shaving your head because you just can’t deal with the hair drama anymore (see Netflix’s Nappily Ever After, which is cracking btw) or it might be a dress you think makes your legs look more thunder thighs than thick thighs save lives. But do the scary thing, wear the scary shoes, they might end up being your new favourite look, expectation be damned.

Bea X