Friends would never accuse me of a shoe fetish — thank good­ness for that! You won’t find gazil­lion dol­lar charges on my credit cards for Jimmy Choo, Manolo Blah­nik or other fash­ion­ista brands. But I care a lot about wear­ing the right shoes, when it counts.

Shoes for Boating

All last week I lived in boat shoes that fea­tured a really grippy sole, ideal for mov­ing around on wet sail­boat decks.

We were on a week­long char­ter with 3 other friends, and I had to be ready to han­dle my share of crew chores. Yoga gave me core strength for han­dling lines and dock­ing maneu­vers, but shoes with plenty of trac­tion kept me safe.

Wear­ing the right foot­gear made all the dif­fer­ence in com­fort, sta­bil­ity — and on wet sail­boat decks — per­sonal safety. No one wants to cause a “man over­board” res­cue just because their shoes lost trac­tion while motor­ing at speed.

My girl­friend’s so-called boat shoes were the same brand as mine, but hers quickly became uncom­fort­able and had no trac­tion. Even though she bought her shoes at West Marine, a boat­ing spe­cialty store, they were fash­ion shoes, not true boat shoes. (Admit­tedly, her feet looked more attrac­tive off­shore than mine.)

Her choice of shoes con­strained how she could help with sail­ing activ­i­ties, lim­it­ing her to times when sur­faces were dry or sta­bil­ity in motion was­n’t an issue. Buy­ing the wrong shoes ended up frus­trat­ing her; for­tu­nately, our sunny weather meant her non-grippy shoes did not put her at risk.

Shoes for Walking

When I was a young girl on my first visit to New York, my aunt advised me to sac­ri­fice fash­ion for com­fort when it comes to footwear. At the time she owned a closet full of high heels.

My aunt worked as a PR maven in Man­hat­tan dur­ing the height of the Mad Men era. She showed me how years of walk­ing on NYC pave­ments in high heels had deformed her feet and crum­pled her toes together. Her mes­sage: learn from my mis­take. I was shocked to see how man­gled her feet had become, and never for­got her les­son.

Instead you’ll see me wear­ing dusty walk­ing shoes from Mephisto, ugly but supremely com­fort­able shoes that enable me to walk for hours when vis­it­ing places like Barcelona or Paris. I may look like the ugly Amer­i­can, but my feet are happy to ven­ture out day after day because they are not crip­pled with pain or debil­i­tat­ing blis­ters.

I’m happy to live in Seat­tle, where peo­ple are will­ing to sac­ri­fice fash­ion for com­fort. At least most of the time…