will saddle shoes ever make it big?
long forgotten as the middle child between the esteemed loafer and the adored maryjane, the saddle shoe has yet to see its heyday.
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ON A CRISP NOVEMBER DAY, Lauren Bucquet is in a Las Vegas warehouse processing returns for her eponymous shoe brand Labucq. It’s been a hectic few weeks for the short-staffed team, so she’s in business owner mode—rolling her sleeves up and getting shit done.
Little does she know, she’s about to find a handwritten note from none other than Sarah Jessica Parker herself, tucked inside one of these inconspicuous brown boxes.
I love your shoes!
Tried to make them fit
been looking for a saddle for DECADES!
I guess I’m 7.5
Congratulations on your wonderful collection—
I will keep looking—
<3 SJP
When Lauren pieced together what happened (SJP returned shoes that didn’t fit) she burst into tears.
Her husband and business partner, Adam Humphreys, explained that the “complicated emotional response” came from a string of challenging weeks for the brand. “On one hand it’s validating, on the other…an L,” he adds. For any small business, having someone as iconic as SJP wear or mention your brand is game-changing.
Your mind can’t help but flash to the possibility of what could have been. If only they had fit. If only the pesky half size thing weren’t an issue. If only if only if only. I would cry too.
Lauren launched these saddle shoes as part of Labucq’s recent Fall 2024 collection.
They were a creative risk, a wildcard among the predictable fall footwear we’ve come to expect year after year.
Reader, you and I both know that at the first hint of a chill autumnal breeze, fashion Substack chats pop off with questions seeking loafer and maryjane recs. Loafers trend every fall without fail. Everyone want a “classic” black pair. Maryjanes, which may have been niche 4 years ago, were perhaps the biggest breakout star in the women’s footwear space since the beginning of the pandemic.
But saddle shoes? Honestly, no one is really thinking about them. When I told my friends I was writing about saddle shoes, they were like “wait, what’s a saddle shoe?” or “do you mean like…an oxford shoe?”
So I sent a photo. Based on my friends’ responses—from “very lesbian lover coded” to “kinda samba-esque”—the saddle shoe lacks a distinct, unifying cultural reference in 2024. Are they preppy? Are they butch? Are they giving theater kid?
We can’t decide. For millennials and Gen Z, we’ve seen glimmers of this shoe throughout our lives, but the saddle shoe has never been *the defining* sartorial element of a contemporary subculture, in my opinion. I loosely recall these being worn by twee/indie band types in the early 2010s, but again—there wasn’t really a prototypical saddle shoe wearer.
I’ve come across Reddit threads with older folks who recall these shoes being popular in the 80s and call them “Sadie Oxfords.” Depending on your age and where you grew up, the saddle shoe likely brings up a unique, culturally localized set of associations.
In a way, this was the whole point: to create a shoe that wasn’t borne out of the algorithm.
I’ve never seen an ootd video of saddle shoes on TikTok—have you? They are not market-tested. They are not “celeb-approved.” They will not generate reliable sales in the way a loafer or maryjane would.
As a veteran footwear designer and mastermind behind Rag & Bone’s iconic ankle boots during the indie sleaze era, Lauren knows all this. Yet she did it anyway. Here was her thought process:
“What do other people not have, that we could do? Can we stake a claim to a new trend? Could Labucq actually create, out of nothing almost, a new look?
While she isn’t sure that the saddle shoe will create an epochal trend like the maryjane, she knows that it would galvanize a certain kind of stylish person. For example: Janelle Monae, who always wears black and white on the red carpet to honor her parents, who wore black and white uniforms as custodian workers.1 I could personally see someone like Ayo Edebiri or Olivia Rodrigo (a known fan of Labucq shoes) wearing them.
While celebrity-driven trends are a reality of today’s fashion landscape, I think the best trends are the one that stem from a personal story that is so specific to a time, a place and a person that it becomes irresistibly universal.
The Labucq saddle shoe is an homage to Lauren’s Poa Poa, and her life as a Chinese immigrant in 1950s California.
Lauren and I started chatting because she read my J.Crew essay and felt that my sociological analysis applied to the saddle shoe, which she views as “white, traditional, and classic American” in connotation. While the saddle shoes were worn in America as the 1920s, they didn’t reach peak popularity until the 1950s. And before the introduction of “unisex” branding, saddle shoes were a genderless shoe for decades, worn by all from “tiny girl scouts to burly, beefy executives.”2
During the rise of Hollywood, saddle shoes appeared in popular culture films set on college campuses, cementing its association with Ivy style/collegiate culture (which was predominantly white and upper-class).3
“I am not really those things,” Lauren reflects.
“I am coming at it from a very different direction.”
The inspiration for the Labucq saddle shoe came from these old family photos of her grandmother (Poa Poa in Chinese).
She immigrated to the states in 1947 from Taishan (where my family is from too) and lived in Palo Alto, California. Lauren imagines that daily life might have been somewhat isolating for her, given that she had to learn English and there was only one other Chinese family at the elementary school her children went to. Poa Poa was mostly a stay-at-home-mom of 3 kids, but she had a brief stint soldering circuits at Admiral (the color TV producer as featured in Mad Men) and helped out at the motel her in-laws owned.
Lauren imagined that for her Poa Poa, the saddle shoes were a fun purchase since they probably couldn’t have afforded to shop much back then:
“She loved fashion, and loved looking her best, so it would make sense that she would have the most popular shoe of the era as part of her everyday style. She always looked put together (this was very important to her) and no matter what always did her eyebrows and put on her red lipstick—even while camping!”
The story of Lauren’s design process definitely makes me view the saddle shoe in a different light. It’s rare to see images of Asian women in 1950s style in mainstream media, or get a glimpse into their interior world. Like, I love a good Betty Draper or Trudy Campbell outfit slideshow, but it’s more interesting to me when images disrupt the narrative of “American-ness” we’re used to seeing.
How I style saddle shoes!
I would wear them in any scenario where you would reach for a loafer or maryjane.
My favorite thing about them is the contrast panel, so I styled these outfits with the intent of having them as exposed as possible. Pairing them with a miniskirt and knee socks offers a modern twist on the 1950s long circle skirt and bobby sock styling.
The soles are orange, which is kinda unexpected. I think it makes the shoe feel more modern, setting it apart from vintage saddle shoe styles (which are in high supply on secondhand shopping platforms).
I played with bringing more orange into the outfit here:
I wore these outfits for run-of-the-mill life activities: grocery shopping, post office, grabbing a coffee. They were easy to move around in and gave me a skip in my step.
I tried to think about how they made me feel, what kind of persona they bring out in me, and word I keep going back to is campy. At times, I feel like a flunk-out girl scout who ranked lowest in her cohort for thin mint sales. Other times I feel like a grandpa who dominates the neighborhood park chess games.
You can’t box the saddle shoe into any particular “aesthetic” or microtrend. It’s freeing.
Perhaps the appeal (and comedic potential) of the saddle shoe lies in its history as a genderless and ageless shoe. They were marketed to men and women, old and young. Applying the modern context of gender expansiveness and sexual fluidity, we get new, funny associations like “the butch who runs a mcdonalds like the navy.”
Will saddle shoes ever make it big again?
Not all shoes need to become zeitgeist-defining trends. But for a shoe designer, it’s kinda the dream, right? If you can create or re-invent something that manages to influence the culture on that level.
In a world where true trendsetting and creativity is dwindling because of technocapitalism, it’s a financial risk to put out something untested. Like the vast majority of designers, Labucq needs to sell in order to continue operating.
“The grand, iconic, vanguard gestures are easier when you are either an established European luxury brand, for whom most product development acts as marketing […] or if you conceive of your line as a sort of art project, a vehicle for your personality, basically a media brand,” Lauren explains.
Ultimately, shoe trends are all about timing. When Labucq released their Boomer sandal (a platform fisherman with summer camp vibes) at the start of the pandemic, there wasn’t anything else like it on the market. So it was the “trendier” people who were buying it, the early adopters who embrace novel styles. Years later, the chunky fisherman style is offered by more brands, and Labucq continues to sell the Boomer—and to actual boomers.
So the saddle shoes didn’t work out for SJP.
But who knows what the future will hold? Will saddle shoes suddenly come onto the map in 2, 3, 4 years from now? Another decade? It’s impossible to know. But as any creative knows, you have to believe in your dream.
In Lauren’s dream…
Labucq kicks off this big saddle shoe trend.
We are a four person company, sitting in our Las Vegas home office.
And we are changing the way women everywhere dress!
After the Row makes their hypothetical version of the saddle shoe, the Row stans are digging up specific vintage versions.
And Labucq gets massive credit for being the brand that started it.
That would be so amazing!
What do you think of saddle shoes?
What do you think is the next big zeitgeist-y shoe trend and why?
Read next…
the ear cuff renaissance is here
*post might cut off in email due to photo quantity, read in browser
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/janelle-monae-in-black-and-white/3/
https://www.keikari.com/english/a-history-of-saddle-shoes/
https://blog.adorsi.com/saddle-shoes-history#:~:text=Hollywood%20played%20a%20significant%20role,high%20schools%20and%20college%20campuses.
The way I LEAPED to read this when the notification popped up!! Love saddle shoes and always have!! To me they are very sockhop, American Graffiti, 1950s rockabilly shoes. Hopefully this is the push they need to make a comeback!
When I met my husband (in college, May 2013,) he wore an unassuming uniform of white Hanes t shirts, blue jeans, and a pair of cream and navy saddle shoes that he laced up religiously until the soles cracked. This sartorial and personal branding dilemma caused by the irreplaceable shoes (I checked) was rectified by a pair of considerably more sedate Mephistos gifted by his grandparents, and began my husband’s transition to a 90% Uniqlo wardrobe in earthy colors befitting the 30-something IT manager he is today. When I think of saddle shoes, I think fondly of my clean-shaven poetry minor boyfriend in his working class Americana cosplay.