Elizabeth Cardinal Tamkin is the content director at Kule, author of the newsletter The Corner Booth, and a former market editor at Man Repeller.
I’m not going to say that it wouldn’t have happened soberly. I had had two glasses of wine with a friend at Lodi and was going to take a car home, but then my friend said, “Don’t be wasteful. Take the subway.” I remembered that somebody had said the B train was maybe down, so I was looking at my phone while I was walking just to make sure the train was still running. This was right after the holidays, so there were a lot of police barricades out, and one of them was ajar and I just went flying.
You know when you fall and you think, That could have been really bad? It wasn’t until a couple of hours later that my knee blew up. The next morning, an X-ray confirmed that I had a broken kneecap. The following day is when I got the full-leg brace. But no one said anything about what footwear to wear, which is a little weird, admittedly. The first week, I didn’t even leave my apartment, so shoes weren’t even a thing. Then, after a few weeks, that’s when I got these Massimo Dutti shoes.
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It might seem like there’s no sense in wearing them with a broken knee, but they’re so soft that I didn’t need anyone to help me put them on. I didn’t need to bend over. They have a rubberized sole, so while I was shuffling about, I wasn’t slipping around. When I wear them, I’ll often be asked, “Are those shoes comfortable?” I have a very high pain tolerance for uncomfortable shoes, but I would say these are comfortable for anyone. I never got blisters from them. In the beginning, I was wearing them with socks, but then I would wear them without socks, and they’re comfortable both ways. They’re true to size. I mean it’s a glove shoe, so it’s supposed to fit like a glove. If you’ve ever tried on a Martiniano, they’re 20 times more comfortable than those. They were easy to stretch on with the elastic sides.
Honestly, they became my most-worn shoes for at least a month and a half. Because I produce all the photo shoots at Kule, I was there with my knee brace, crutches, and these shoes. I was standing on my feet all day. Before Fashion Week, I went to an event with Rothy’s and Harling Ross, who I used to work with at Man Repeller. A couple of people asked about them. I went to the Maria McManus presentation during Fashion Week, and more people asked about them. They were like, “How are you getting around? Are those comfortable?” And you can kind of gauge the general appeal of an item when you post it on Instagram, and these get a lot of What are those?
There were very few purchases made while I was completely immobile, and this pair was one of them. They’re the only new shoes I bought while braced. Technically, my kneecap is still broken, and a 90-degree angle is as far as I’m going. It’s, for sure, sore, and the bone itself will take months, if not a year, to fully heal. I’m no longer in a brace, thank God. But I still really like to wear them. But now I can have them on for 10,000-plus-step days.
Some more shoes I wore while braced
(I was a little risky and didn’t totally wear appropriate shoes.)
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I don’t actually know the first thing about a sneaker, and I didn’t want to look like I was an athlete who was injured. But an all-white sneaker doesn’t scream athleticwear.
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Ferragamo makes them in varying widths, and when you find the right width, they’ll hug your foot. The heel was walkable enough on one leg.
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I wore these on my birthday, which was two weeks after I broke my knee. I stayed at the Greenwich Hotel because I couldn’t do anything else.
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They’re not easy to get on, but they’re secure once they’re on. It’s the shoe I wore when I wanted one that was completely flat but a little bit more stylized.
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