City Streets Are Gross, but You Can Still Wear Sandals—if You Choose Them Carefully

SOME YEARS AGO, a traumatizing encounter with a New York City rat provoked Nicole Vassallo to swear off wearing flimsy, strappy sandals on urban streets. Once a sewer-dwelling rodent comes dangerously close to scampering over your nearly nude feet, “you quickly realize exposed toes—flat on the ground—are not the way to go,” said Vassallo, a 32-year-old luxury-travel publicist who lives in Manhattan. 

It’s not just gutsy vermin that can make cities objectively disgusting. After factoring in sticky and/or oily discarded snack foods and icky puddles of indeterminate depth, sidewalks and subway platforms become minefields of grossness. If asked to choose the most suitable footwear for traversing them, only masochists would pick frail, single-sole sandals with flimsy straps. 

Fortunately, urbanites no longer need to sweat the summer away in sweltering closed-toe kicks. This season, many brands are offering city-safe sandals with enough height and heft to combat such hazards. And they easily beat unsupportive, willowy, strappy designs for comfort, too. 

To determine whether a sandal has the mass and moxie to brave  a messy metropolis, start with the sole. Sandals with thick gum or lug soles are becoming increasingly common, said Olympia Gayot, the women’s creative director at J.Crew. Not only do such substantial bottoms elevate your toes off the ground, they replicate the feel of a sneaker, added Gayot.

“Anything reminiscent of a fisherman, gladiator or a Birkenstock-type [sandal] is a great option for the city,” she said. To explain her longtime loyalty to Birkenstock sandals, Gayot cites their trademark molded footbeds, which boast a protective lip that curls up slightly around feet. 

After assessing a sandal’s ability to repel grime and discourage all but the most foot-fetishizing rats, focus on its comfort credentials. Claire Mazur, a podcast host who lives in Brooklyn, barely remembers her days of running around in thin-soled flats. “I’m 39, I have a child and my body needs a comfortable sandal now,” she said. “I never want to be unable to get somewhere because my feet hurt.” Mazur’s current criterion—that sandals support her comfortably and chicly through hours of city schlepping—helped her zero in on two go-to pairs: black leather slides by Emme Parsons and thick-cork-soled sandals with wide elastic top bands by the brand Message.

We asked Michelle Ochs, founder and creative director of the New York fashion label Et Ochs for her approved city styles. Topping her list: sturdy black flatform sandals, which she considers ideal for full days at work and excessive walking.

What else? “Dad sandals,” a category Ochs said includes fashion-forward takes on anything Birkenstock- or Teva-adjacent. She’s partial to her sporty black leather pair by the Row, which fasten via convenient, Teva-ish Velcro straps. The black MM6 Maison Margiela sandals shown below are a flatform/dad-sandal mashup worth considering. 

In warmer-climate cities like Austin, Texas, sandal season extends from May through October, according to Molly Nutter, president of Austin fashion retailer ByGeorge. Nutter said that upscale versions of laid-back classics—such as Loewe’s thick-sole leather thong sandals—sell consistently well there, but that fisherman sandals (like the yellow ones shown below) prevail among stylish insiders as a more polished summertime shoe. When women “wear a shoe like that with a suit that’s relaxed and cool,” she noted, the sandals function as a “kind of secret nod.”

This is, arguably, the summer of the fisherman sandal, with countless brands peddling versions—from sleek to chunky—of the caged style. Among the labels who have seized on the silhouette, named for European seamen who first wore them centuries ago: Marni, Church’s, Gabriela Hearst and Gucci, which recently released a rubberized version evocative of childhood jellies.

Manhattan attorney Christine Doniak, 53, owns two pairs of puffed-up leather fisherman sandals by the brand Hereu in different colors, and recently bought a version by Coach that hoists her feet above concrete thanks to a platform sole. “I think they look great with wide pants and long skirts and dresses,” she said. Would she ever sport hers with socks, as Hailey Bieber did in June? “Yes,” she said, but mostly for practicality’s sake, “because the city is ridiculously filthy.” 

Mazur, the podcast host, wears socks with her Emme Parsons fisherman sandals for style, not safety. “I love a short, ruffled sock big time,” she said. Sheer crew socks also feature prominently in her rotation. 

As postpandemic dress codes for workplaces remain hazy, fisherman sandals—with their full-coverage design—not only get you through messy, filthy streets untainted, they ably walk the line between skimpy and conservative. “The rule now is ‘business casual,’ but no one knows what that means,” said Doniak. She confidently dresses up her fisherman sandals with pleated linen  shorts by Rachel Comey and a matching blazer for a summery,  office-appropriate take on suiting. On the days that Ochs spends  in the design studio, she dons her the Row flatforms with structured denim jeans and a crisp white  button-down.

Gayot, meanwhile, suggests complementing most summer sandal styles with a “chic,  drapey, puddling suit” for a look that instantly projects chic nonchalance. “Yay to sandals at work,” she said. “I wait all year for this moment.”

Make up by Roy Liu, Model: Julia Miller for Stetts Models

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