Margaret's letter — Elizabeth Suede Tassel Loafers
A letter from Margaret, about the loafers she bought for the look and kept for her feet
I bought them because they made me smile. I kept them because my feet stopped complaining.
Six things the Elizabeth Suede Tassel Loafers get right that everyday shoes get wrong.
Let me be plain about who is writing. I am Margaret, I am 64, I work three days a week at a garden centre near Hampton Court, and I have spent thirty years buying shoes that looked right in the shop and turned on me by the afternoon. Court shoes I could stand in for an hour. Ballet flats that rubbed the same spot on my little toe every single time. Trainers that were comfortable and made every outfit look like I was on my way to the gym.
So this is not a review. It is a woman who has worn one pair nearly every day for eleven weeks, telling you what they are actually like on the foot.
Here is what all those years taught me. Shoes come in two piles. The smart pile, the ones that look lovely and come out twice a year because you know what they do to your feet. And the comfortable pile, the ones you can walk all day in and would rather nobody looked at closely.
Too painful to wear, or too dull to enjoy. Those were the options, and I had done my time in both. These are the first pair I own that are neither, and it comes down to six things.
There was no breaking-in period
The test I apply to any shoe now is simple: what do my feet feel like at four o’clock on the first day? With these, the honest answer was nothing in particular, which I have decided is the highest compliment a shoe can be paid. The suede is soft rather than stiff, so it gives where the foot is widest instead of pressing back, and there was no rubbing at the spot where every other pair has left its mark. I wore them to work on day two, which I would not normally risk with anything new.
★★★★★
Wore them straight out of the box for a whole day out and not one blister. I have never been able to say that about a new pair.
Margaret Thompson · Customer, East Molesey
There is room where my foot is widest
Most shoes in my size narrow to a shape my foot has never been. These are cut with extra space through the toe and forefoot, so my toes sit side by side the way they do barefoot, and nothing digs in across the joint where my bunion is. I take a UK 6 and ordered my usual size, which was right. They go from UK 3.5 up to UK 8, and if you are between sizes or have a wide foot I would take the larger of the two.
The sole does the work my feet used to
Underfoot there is a cushioned bed on a braided platform, and that little bit of height gives a steadier feel than I expected from something this light. The difference shows up late in the day rather than early. A morning on the hard floors at the garden centre used to leave my heels aching by the evening. Now it mostly does not. I am not going to tell you a shoe will cure anything, because it will not. But there is a real difference between standing on something that gives and standing on something that does not.
★★★★★
I am on my feet six hours a shift and these are the first pair I have not had to change out of halfway through.
Susan Bennett · Customer, Bath
They go on without a fight
No laces, no buckles, no bending down in the hallway. You step in and they stay on, because the opening is cut to hold the heel rather than slap against it. If your fingers have given up on fiddly fastenings, as mine largely have, that matters more than it sounds.
They still look like the day they arrived
I have worn them four or five days a week since the start of July — to work, to the market, to my sister’s in Guildford and back — and they have held their shape. The suede has kept its colour and the braided trim has picked up almost nothing. That is the whole of the care routine as far as I can tell: a soft brush now and then, keep them out of heavy rain, let them dry away from the radiator.
★★★★★
Three months in and they still look new. The suede has not marked at all, which I half expected it to.
Patricia Collins · Customer, Canterbury
They do the whole week, in one pair
This is the part I did not expect. A loafer with tassels ought to be the difficult one in the wardrobe, saved for something. Instead it turns out that brown suede goes with nearly everything — jeans, navy trousers, a plain dress, my green work fleece. It lifts an outfit rather than arguing with it, and I get asked about them roughly once a week. There is a black pair as well, though the brown is the one I would choose again.
Against the shoes you have been buying
Most everyday shoes
- Need breaking in, and blister while they do
- Narrow through the toes, tight across the joint
- A thin flat insole with nothing underfoot
- Comfortable or smart, rarely both
- Fiddly laces or buckles at the door
The Elizabeth Suede Tassel Loafers
- Soft suede upper that gives from the first wearing
- Extra room through the toe and forefoot
- Cushioned bed on a braided platform sole
- Smart enough to notice, plain enough to wear daily
- Step in and go, no fastenings
About the price
The Elizabeth Suede Tassel Loafers are £29.95, down from £60.00. I will pass on what the shop told me, which is that this is the run being cleared to make room for the new season, and once a size goes it is gone. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that a mark-down like that is usually where I start asking what is wrong with something, and eleven weeks of near-daily wearing in, I have not found it.
I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over a hundred of them, sitting at 4.6 stars, which sounded like real people rather than robots. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.
If your shoes come off the moment you are through the door, and the comfortable pair in your wardrobe is one you would rather nobody photographed, these are the ones I would put you in. Go and look while your size is still there.
Margaret
The Elizabeth Suede Tassel Loafers
★★★★★ 4.6 out of 5 from 100+ reviews
£60.00£29.95
- Roomy fit with extra space through the toe and forefoot
- Cushioned bed on a braided platform sole
- Soft suede upper with tassel detail
- Slip-on, no laces or buckles
- UK 3.5 to UK 8, in brown and black
- Free UK delivery · 30 day returns
