A letter from a reader

At 59, I took a fourth pair of trousers in to be taken up, and the woman doing the alterations asked me what had changed about me in 2019.

You should picture me writing this at the kitchen table with a cup of tea going cold beside me, because that is exactly how slowly it has come. I am not a writer, and the length of another woman’s trousers has never been any of my business.

But four women have asked me about these in the last fortnight, two of them at the same table at book club, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

It started at the alterations place off Stirling Highway, where I have been going for about fifteen years. I put a pair of good navy trousers on the counter and asked for two and a half centimetres off. She wrote it down, looked at her book, looked at me, and asked whether I knew that this was the fourth pair I had brought in since 2019 and every one of them had been the same two and a half centimetres. I said I did not know that. And then she said it.

Nothing has changed about you, love. You stopped wearing a heel. That is a different thing.

I laughed, and then I walked back to the car and sat in it for a minute, and she was right. 2019 is when my feet and I came to an arrangement about heels. And ever since then I have been quietly paying a woman to alter my entire wardrobe to fit a shorter version of myself, two and a half centimetres at a time, without once noticing I was doing it.

I did not decide to have my whole wardrobe shortened. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides that. It happens quietly, one pair of trousers at a time, until somebody with a book on the counter reads your own history back to you.

How it happens

When I actually thought about why I had given up the height rather than the shoe, I understood the choice I had been offered.

There are two kinds of shoe and there always have been. There is the one with a heel, which puts your foot on a slope and puts all of your weight onto the front of it, and which I managed for thirty years and then stopped managing. And there is the flat, which is comfortable and which is flat.

A heel or the floor. That was the whole shoe shop. Nobody seemed to think a woman might want to be a bit taller without being tipped forward to get there.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You buy the flats. Your trousers drag. You take them to a woman who shortens them. And you assume that giving up the height is simply part of the arrangement.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong, and I suspect I am not alone.

I thought I had given up heels. That is how I have described it to people for seven years. I gave up heels.

It turns out that is not what I gave up at all.

What I could not do any more was the slope. The angle at the ankle and the whole of my weight pushed down onto the front of my foot — that is the part that stopped being possible. The height was never the problem. And if the sole is the same thickness at the front as it is at the back, you can have the height and stand completely level on it, which is a thing I did not know was available.

It took me until 59, and a woman with a book on a counter, to work that out.

They are called the Tina

They are from Perth Boutique, a small Australian boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. My sister Carol found them, which she reminds me of regularly.

They are called the Tina, and they are a knit sandal on a platform. The whole upper is a soft stretchy knit rather than anything stiff, and the sole is thick the whole way along. Mine are the pink, which was not the sensible choice and I do not want to discuss it. There are six colours.

The platform is the part that matters. Because it is the same depth under the heel as it is under the ball of the foot, you stand level on it. There is no slope and nothing is being pushed forward, and you are still a good deal further off the ground than you were in a flat. The knit upper does the other half of it — it is soft and it gives where your foot is widest rather than holding you in a shape, and it breathes, which in February is not a small thing.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is height without the slope.

What happened on the Thursday

The first proper outing was the Thursday shop, which is where everything in my life gets tested.

Three women asked me about them before I got back to the car. The one at the deli counter started it, because she said she had been looking for something she could be on her feet in that was not flat.

The third was Lorraine, who I have known for twenty years and who has never once commented on anything I wear. She looked at me, properly looked, and asked whether I had done something different. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the questions, though, was that evening. I put on the navy trousers — the pair that had just come back from being taken up — and they were now too short. Not by much. By about two and a half centimetres. I stood in the bedroom and laughed out loud on my own, which Don heard from downstairs and did not ask about.

The three pairs I have not yet had altered are hanging up, and they are the right length again. Completely myself.

Three things I have learned since

One. I never gave up heels. I gave up the slope. Seven years of describing it the wrong way to myself, and the wrong description is what kept me in flats. The height was never the thing I could not do.

Two. Level is the whole trick. Thick at the back and thick at the front means nothing is tipping you forward, and that single fact is the difference between a shoe I can stand in all day and one I cannot.

Three. The knit matters more than I expected. It gives where my foot is widest instead of holding it in a shape, and on a hot afternoon it breathes. A stiff upper on a platform would be a very handsome shoe I never put on.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Tina is $64.95. It was $129.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because I have spent more than that at the alterations place since 2019, which is a sentence I would rather not have had to write down.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no middleman taking a cut, and they have their end of season sale on at the moment, which on these is half off, with free shipping Australia wide.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and had a proper look before I ordered. Six colours, and the sizes run from an AU 5 to an AU 12, all at the same price. There is a note on the page saying that if you have wider feet you should take one size up, which I appreciated, because nobody ever tells you that and it is usually the reason something goes back.

Then I ordered the beige as well, which Carol says is me pretending the pink was an accident.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat in the kitchen with the teapot between us and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you gave up heels at some point and quietly rearranged everything else around it — the hems, the long skirts you stopped wearing, the photographs you stand slightly forward in — then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

Not because a pair of sandals will change your life. They will not. But there is something in getting a couple of centimetres back without paying for them later in the day that I had quietly given up on, and I would rather you did not give up on it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the free shipping goes with it. And if your feet are on the wider side, take the size up, because the page says so and it is right.

I have not been back to the alterations place since.

Maggie