Before my secular private school allowed sneakers into the dress code, I wore boat shoes every weekday for four years. I would see them each morning, sitting by my front door, and think of a half-deflated football with that soft, burnished brown leather a sorry contrast to the cream-colored lacing. When they came undone, as they often did due to haphazard tying on my part, the tendrils were rigid enough to coil like unruly horns but were still prone to dragging. I never liked them, representative as they were of the tanned Connecticut country club culture from which I felt alienated as a pale and sickly pubescent. The second I was able, I traded them for New Balances and didn’t think about them again for a decade.
This season, I didn’t pick up a pair of bleach-white suede boat shoes from Sperry by Todd Snyder in preparation for some sailing excursion down my native Atlantic coast, nor was I looking to spend all that much time in the WASP nests of my youth. Truth be told, I was feeling contrarian. I like to dress with a sense of humor, and the prospect of whiling away a Brooklyn summer in a pair of Sperrys amused me, in part because I had just read Bret Easton Ellis’s The Shards and was also considering a pair of Wayfarers (not yet purchased). The joke wasn’t on me in the end, though—the shoe I once considered lame prep is now my summer staple for its supreme comfort and carefree spirit.
Starting with color—because Sperry has been around forever, it’s easy for one’s imagination to get stuck in the rut of reddish-brown. The shoe is born anew in ivory, as though washed clean. I immediately envisaged pairing them with some tube socks pulled taut over my calves and up into a pair of similarly crisp linen pants. If going for this white monochrome on the bottom, I figured it would be best to go black up top with a simple T-shirt tucked in and belted. I wore this to work the day I secured the shoes, and felt like Christian Stovitz from Clueless.
My afternoon saunter around Brookfield Place and the North Cove Yacht Harbor that day wasn’t heaven just because I looked good, however, but also because I felt great. Looking out at those boats with the breeze rustling my hair, I felt pulled to leap aboard one and start tying knots and setting sail and the like. It would have been easy because the shoes are so soft and supple and flexible. They bestowed in my step a veritable spring! Before I knew it, I was wearing them all across the city—to pick up my dry cleaning with a pair of track shorts and, yes, high socks; to happy hours galore, always alfresco. They will imminently accompany me to Miami Beach for a travel conference, where I will be quite comfortable moving from my many meetings to evenings oceanside. They
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For much of my childhood in the Berkshires region of western Massachusetts, I didn’t give a hoot about the Housatonic River. In contrast to the many lakes where my brother and I would swim or skate, attend Scout camps or sprawl out for family picnics, the hushed and shaded Housatonic seemed unfamiliar and at times downright eerie. Notions of Edenic riverbanks came from my mom reading “The Wind in the Willows” out loud after dinner — not from encounters with the actual river that flowed 330 yards from our front door.
On this episode of The Last Resort, host Christina Jelski talks to Brandon White, owner of Share the Magic Travel, to talk about his recent visit to the Sandals Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
People who visit Airbnb’s website and app in the U.S. first view the nightly rate and they can toggle to view the total price with all fees before taxes.
When guests arrived at the Mouki Mou store in Athens at 6 p.m. on the last weekend in May, they grabbed cool glasses of Greek rosé before retreating into the concrete-clad boutique. Its founder, Maria Lemos, who grew up in Greece, opened the shop in the city’s historic center, Plaka, in 2023, ten years after establishing Mouki Mou’s flagship on London’s Chiltern Street. In both places, she curates a roster of under-the-radar clothing and homeware brands that center craftsmanship with a tactile, wabi-sabi approach. On this particular evening, the brand in focus was Dosa, founded by the American-based Korean designer Christina Kim, 67, in 1983. The label is known for its roomy clothes in natural, hand-woven fabrics that nod to workwear such as shepherd jackets, kurtas (long, loose shirts common in Pakistan), cossack tops and dashikis (boxy tops worn in West Africa), as well as its no-waste approach to production.
If you want to fly from the West Coast to Europe in British Airways premium economy or business class this year, now is a good time to book your flights.
Low-cost airline Norse Atlantic Airways is turning two, and celebrating its milestone anniversary with one-way flights to Europe starting at just $149.
If you want a harmonious plane journey, best not let your kids play in the aisle, get drunk, or watch a movie without headphones, an online survey from pollster YouGov found.
Self-drive boating holidays redefined A new agreement between Le Boat and Groupe Beneteau under their Delphia brand in Poland will see Europe’s largest boat rental company invest over £100m into its international fleet over the next ten years. The deal will ensure travellers have an even greater range of options to choose from when planning their self-drive boating holidays and provides innovation to the current charter market as it stands. Of the 400 new Delphia boats slated to be built over the coming decade for Le Boat, 100 will be made in the next three years, including at least 25 in 2025. These orders will be a combination of the current Horizon range, plus 34 of a premium new one to two cabin boat, aptly named “Liberty” which will be launched in 2025. As part of the Luxury range, designed for premium comfort, these new superior boats will be found on the canals and water ways of France including, Brittany, Lot, Alsace, Burgundy, Loire-Nivernais, Midi and the Camargue as well as the Thames, Germany and the Netherlands.