There was some extent in my highschool profession, smack dab in the midst of the 2010s—the canine days of the Indie Sleaze Period—the place a sure pair of shoes turned all the fad. In a single day, it appeared like everybody was carrying ankle boots featured gaping cutouts on both facet, held collectively by chunky buckles.

On the time, only a few of us knew that what we had been carrying was really a knockoff of the Balenciaga Ceinture boot, which first debuted within the model’s spring 2011 assortment below Nicolas Ghesquière—a group which Vogue‘s Nicole Phelps described as “a teddy boy-meets-punk masculinity.” Maybe it was that punky ethos that appealed to my classmates and I. We paired our boots with knee-high socks, American Attire tennis skirts, and band tees. (Someone cue AM by Arctic Monkeys.)

The buckle boots weren’t simply common amongst my fellow angsty teenagers. Celebrities—together with Mary-Kate Olsen, Bella Hadid, Kendall Jenner, Kylie Jenner, Hailey Bieber, Dakota Fanning, Nicole Richie, and Ashley Benson—had been amongst their avowed followers. 

Steff Yotka, head of content material at SSENSE, breaks down the middle-ground station that the boots occupied: “Virtually the rationale I just like the fashion is as a result of discovering apparently designed flat boots is sort of not possible,” she says. “There are kind of fundamental Chelsea boots or actually hefty fight boots or….nothing?” Certainly, they appeared to supply a number of choices. They could possibly be worn in all seasons (for Californians, at the least), with tights, socks, or bare-footed. I wore mine practically daily, till the lug sole fell proper off.

Not solely sartorially distinctive, the buckle boot appears emblematic of a less complicated, bygone period, though it peaked solely a decade in the past. Yotka shares my sense of longing. “There’s positively a nostalgia issue—I bear in mind watching the Balenciaga spring 2011 present when it occurred and wanting desperately to be THAT lady,” she says. Yotka has gone as far as to hunt for them, just lately taking the plunge on a low-top pair. “Through the years I’ve been amassing totally different items from that present, however the boots had been all the time a white whale.”

I really feel like we’re on the precipice of a buckle boot comeback. Perhaps it is the wind-down of Y2K fashion (God prepared) and the uptick in Indie Sleaze revival, or perhaps it is the truth that our wardrobes are lacking the versatile boot. Both means, I’d hate to see them relegated to only a slim margin of time. They deserve one other day within the solar.

Whether or not they make a real comeback clearly stays to be seen. However Yotka has recommendation for many who share the sense of craving (and do not wish to purchase a used pair of Ceintures on Vestiaire or The RealReal): Kiko Kostadinov’s ribbon boots. “the right marriage between a sneaker and boot,” she says.