I Just Got Back from LA and Everyone was Wearing These Nostalgic Summer Sandals

Picture this: the sun is slipping behind the city’s famous mid-century bungalows, casting a heavenly glow across Heidi Montag’s face which is plastered on billboards and telephone poles, all blonde coiffed hair and beaming Hollywood smile. Everywhere you look, girls are wearing low-rise jeans that sit snugly over heeled flip-flop sandals, framing French pedicures.

No, this isn’t a scene fromThe Hills circa 2003—this is 2025, and I’m sitting in Santo, a buzzy neighbourhood sushi bar in LA’s cool Silver Lake district. My boyfriend had the good sense to book ahead of our trip, and thank goodness he did, because it feels like all of LA has turned out on this balmy evening to try and get a table.

In line, nursing biodynamic wines, there’s the usual sea of baseball caps and ‘throwing fits’ style ensembles—I spot more than one pair of Acne’s intentionally distressed jeans—but among the predictable low-key Cali-cool looks, one item stands out: the heeled flip-flop.

Once considered a relic of the Y2K era, this summer the sandal has made a triumphant return, thanks to labels like Jimmy Choo and TOTEME. Coperni also offers a wedged platform pair—which feels pleasingly Lizzie McGuire-like—but tonight, all the California cool girls are wearing whisper-thin heels with an almost threadbare thonged vamp.

The jury—by which I mean the internet—is still out on the origins of the heeled flip-flop. It’s most commonly associated with early Aughts fashion, albeit in a subtler way than, say, the printed baby tees also on display around the city. I was convinced Carrie, or at least one of the Sex and the City squad, had worn a pair during those iconic LA episodes (RIP The Standard, Hollywood), but after scouring the internet, I was proven wrong.

Nevertheless, something about the heeled flip-flop feels very SATC—so in a sense, it only seems right that the divisive shoe is finding a new audience just as the third season of And Just Like That airs. Perhaps this season, alongside continuing to right some of the more notable wrongs, the show might put fashion’s favourite footwear fetishist in a pair of heeled flip-flops. This pair has Carrie’s name(plate) all over it...

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