I fell in love with Fluevogs the first time I saw an ad. The bright neons, soles of ridiculous sizes, and oversized buckles all reminded me of the shoes the Whos in the Jim Carrey version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas wore. Memories of my family of origin laughing at the Whos’ ridiculous clothes ran through my mind, so I assumed they’d be a cheap thing few wanted. But I quickly discovered they were high end and outside of my price range.
A photo of a pair of boots on stairs. The right boot sits on the higher step, the toe pointing away from the camera so the full side is visible. The left boot sits on the lower step with the toe pointing toward the camera. A turquoise and white lace pattern is visible. The soles are blue, and the laces are black. The stairs are carpeted in three shades of brown. The background is formed by a dark brown baseboard and a white wall.
Moving to the city on my own opened up a whole new world of thrift shopping. Here, on-season, high end clothes actually appear. All I was ever able to find in my rural home state—1980s—were JCPenney clothes from someone cleaning out their basement. When I discovered that the city’s thrift stores also had a high rate of turnover, I began making regular once-a-month visits.
The thrift store employee who organized the store the day I met my boots knew what they had, because they were not ostracized to the shoe section. No, they’d placed them conspicuously on top of a clothing rack that happened to be at my eye level. My heart fluttered the instant I saw them. I hoped they were Fluevogs, although I suspected they had to be knock-offs. These were the sort of work boots a 1960s scifi movie would costume their skyscraper builders with. They weren’t black or brown but bright turquoise with matching laces and blue soles. It was a turquoise that I felt like I’d never seen in the natural world but that also, somehow, felt like an external version of my soul.
I barely breathed as I darted to the clothing rack, reaching for them before I even fully arrived. When I pulled them down, marveling at the smooth leather, I saw they were real Fluevogs—from the DDFT pull tabs to the Fluevog name on the bright soles. I pulled the tongue forward to inspect the sizing, expecting my usual poor luck of a pair not quite my size. But—miracle of miracles—these were my exact size.
I inspected them more closely. The turquoise of the upper was actually mixed with white in a mock lace pattern. I don’t usually like lace because it’s so itchy, but seeing it as a pattern on something so perfectly smooth let me see the beauty in lace for the first time. But I also noticed they were barely worn. A boon, right? Well, I assumed their near mint condition would warrant only a minor price reduction from the usual hundreds. I sought out the price tag, and my jaw dropped open. They were marked at just $50. It felt like a sign from God. These boots were mine.
A photo taken from the perspective of a woman looking down at her own feet. The tops of turquoise and white boots with black laces are centered in the frame with legs wearing gray jeans coming up from them. Multi-colored confetti surrounds the boots on a gray sidewalk.
It was the first pair of shoes that I bought because I loved them, and not to fit an external purpose. They weren’t a pair of black flats for job interviews. They weren’t the cheapest pair of running shoes for my workouts. There was no reason for buying these beyond the fact that it felt like a part of my own soul hailed me from them. I brought them home and immediately wore them the next day. Unlike any other pair of shoes I’d ever owned, these didn’t require a few days of playing chicken with potential blisters forming on your feet until you and the shoes get used to each other. They enveloped my feet in blissful comfort from day one. I found myself strutting down the street. They screamed, “I am here! I am me!”
I immediately started wearing them daily. It wasn’t until I did so that I had any conception that I was making some sort of queer fashion statement. I’m a bisexual cis woman, and, when I bought the boots I was early in my relationship with my now-husband. I think of myself as femme if pressed, but, deep down I’m not sure how much I really live up to the name. I went to Sephora once in my twenties to buy makeup for my wedding that I never used up before it expired. I routinely forget to put in earrings. I don’t “do” my hair. I shave so infrequently that I constantly have to push off the subscription renewal for my Billie razor head replacements. But even so, somehow, I hadn’t realized how others coded me as straight. Until I started wearing my Fluevogs.
It was subtle, but I could see people seeing the queerness in me. Whether it was other queer people I didn’t know coming up to me with complements or cis straight people saying things like “Really? Those shoes with that dress?” or giving a quizzical eyebrow or look that said, “Wow, I can’t believe you’re wearing those.” But actually neither scenario really mattered to me. After a couple of months, I realized that I loved the boots and didn’t care what anyone else thought of them. If I was going someplace where I couldn’t wear these boots, then it likely wasn’t someplace I wanted to be anyway. I’d been holding myself back from buying the fashions I wanted to wear. Sometimes because of the cost. Sometimes because I wasn’t sure where I could wear them. But after these boots, I started buying and wearing what I wanted to. Because I realized how much happier my whole day was when I was true to myself, even if other people didn’t like it.
The first thing to wear out was the laces. I couldn’t find blue ones, so I bought black replacements. The boots were still beautiful to me, and I kept wearing them until the soles wore out. Then I discovered I could get them resoled at Fluevog. When I stepped inside the store for the first time, my precious boots in a bag rather than on my feet, I discovered how rare they are. The clerk told me they’re a special edition. She was floored that I got them for $50 at a thrift store never worn. But I also found out the rareness meant the blue soles were hard to come by. She kindly sent an email to all the Fluevog stores in the entire nation pursuing them. Then I got the call. One store had them and sent them to my store. I was able to drop off my boots to get resoled—in blue.
A photo looking down at the back of a pair of boots. The black pull tabs say “John Fluevog” in bright blue. The leather uppers are a turquoise and white lace pattern. The soles are blue, and wear is visible on both, although the sole of the left shows wear at a dramatic angle, and the sole is coming away from the leather upper. The background is a carpet in multiple shades of brown.
Picking up my resoled boots was one of the last things I did out and about at the tipping edge of the start of the pandemic. When there were some rumblings in the news about a virus, and there were questions about whether or not our city should host a planned conference. I never would have imagined this would be one of the last errands I’d run before being sent to work from home. Then being asked to stay home as much as possible. And I’ve worn them every day on my mental health walks around the neighborhood throughout the whole pandemic. From the early days, when I joked light-heartedly to friends about how my husband was the only person I’d let within six feet of me. To this New Year’s Day when I snapped a photo of my feet surrounded by confetti, my husband, not well enough to walk with me, shocked that this somehow managed to be the hardest New Year’s of the pandemic yet. But even surrounded by the sparkling confetti, to me my boots still manage to be the brightest thing in the picture. The bright blue cheering me up and reminding me I’m still here, still unapologetically me on even the darkest of days.
