I almost didn’t order these sandals. Here’s what changed my summer.
A note from a reader who almost gave up on walking sandals after sixty, and the small Malibu boutique that quietly changed her mornings.
I am 63 years old, and I have absolutely no business getting emotional about a pair of walking sandals on a Tuesday morning.
But here we are.
There is a woman in my morning walking group named Diane. She is sixty-eight, walks four miles before most people are out of bed, and a few weeks ago she showed up at the trail head in a pair of beige sandals that stopped two of us mid sentence. We all just stared at her feet. By the end of our four miles I had asked her three times where they came from.
She told me about a small coastal label called Claire & June Malibu that has been quietly making sandals for women our age for the last few years. They are running a beach season sale right now, and Diane had ordered the beige pair the week before.
I went home, looked it up, and almost closed the tab. I have been burned by enough internet shopping in the last decade to be deeply suspicious of any small label I have not heard of. But something about Diane’s sandals kept nagging at me. So I poured a glass of sweet tea, sat down on the porch, and did the thing I had not done with a footwear brand in a very long time. I read.
The bit that got me
The sandal is called the Glyresan. It is a featherlight walking sandal with a real cushioned orthopedic footbed inside, which is the part that surprised me, because almost nothing at this price point of a typical mall shoe is actually orthopedic anymore. It is almost always a flat foam insert, or what they call “memory foam,” which is mostly polyurethane that compresses after a season and then leaves your heel exactly where it started.
I had completely forgotten what real arch support felt like until I started reading about it again. Real support cradles the heel cup. It does not slide forward over the day. It does not press on the balls of your feet after ten minutes of walking. It actually gets quieter the more you wear it, like a pair of slippers that has been broken in over a few summers.
The other thing I noticed was the design. Three soft straps across the top of the foot, an adjustable closure that actually fits a real foot instead of pretending all feet are the same width, and a sole so light I genuinely thought the box was empty when I picked it up. There is no part of me, at 63, that wants to feel my shoes weighing me down by lunch. I want to walk like the day belongs to me.
I read about thirty of the reviews before I even looked at the price. 4.8 stars across 847 women, almost all of them my age, almost all of them using the same word, which was finally.
→ Read about the GlyresanI ordered the Glyresan
I ordered all three colors. I will be honest, I did not plan to. I went on the website meaning to order the beige to test it, and by the time I got to the checkout I had also added the black and the soft blue. The beach season sale brings the price down to $55.95 from $140.00, and the more colors you grab, the more comes off, all the way to 25 percent.
About a week later, the first one arrived in a small kraft paper parcel, tied with a bit of natural twine, with a handwritten note tucked inside. Thank you for trying us. Hope this one earns its place at your front door. - Eleanor.
I put the beige pair on with white linen trousers for a walk with my sister and she said, where on earth did you get those. She is sixty-five. She does not lie about shoes.
What I noticed in the first week
Three things stood out to me, and I have written them down because I knew I would want to remember.
1. My feet stopped aching halfway through the morning walk. I wore the beige pair on the second hottest day we have had this year, four full miles on the trail with Diane and the others, and not once did the dull ache return to the back of my heel or the underside of my arch. That has not happened in a walking sandal I have owned in at least ten years.
2. They are weightless. After two days the straps softened into something that almost feels like a slipper. I have left the house twice now and forgotten I was wearing them, which has not happened with any pair of shoes I can remember.
3. People ask. My sister asked. My hairdresser asked. The woman behind me in line at the post office asked. Three people in three days, all wanting to know where I got them.
Now, about the price
I want to talk about the price, because it was the thing that almost stopped me ordering in the first place. $55.95 for a real orthopedic walking sandal is, frankly, suspicious. I sat at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee and wrote out what I had paid, or seen, for similar sandals in the last five years. The note still sits next to my keys.
- Vionic, $150
- Orthofeet, $129.95
- Birkenstock, $110
- Clarks, $89.99
- Skechers, $69.95
- Glyresan, $55.95
And underneath, in slightly larger letters, the only thing I could think to write… how??
I emailed the boutique. I figured if it was a scam, the email would bounce or someone would not bother to write back. The reply came the next morning from Eleanor herself.
What I’d tell you if we were friends
If you and I were sitting on my front porch right now with a glass of iced tea, and you had asked me whether you should order one, this is what I would say.
I would say that walking sandals like this have, for ten years, been quietly designed for women in their twenties and sold to women in their sixties. I had genuinely started to think that comfort and lightness had divorced each other somewhere around the time I turned fifty, and that I was supposed to pick one. The Glyresan is the first thing in a long time that has changed my mind.
I would tell you that the beige pair is the most flattering thing I have ever put on my feet, and that the black is the one you reach for the most often, and that the soft blue is the one people compliment on the trail. I would tell you the beige goes with absolutely everything in a closet for a woman our age, and the black is the one to grab if you only buy one.
I would tell you that my niece, who has not bought me a piece of clothing in her adult life, sent me a screenshot of the beige pair with the message, Aunt Jess. Read this. I am borrowing the beige ones next time I visit. And then she ordered one for herself.
I would tell you that the popular colors are already starting to thin out, that the beige was almost sold out in the larger sizes the day I checked again, and that the beach season sale is the lowest it goes all year. I would tell you that I bought all three, that I have worn one of them five times in two weeks, and that I am genuinely, for the first time in maybe ten years, looking forward to a long walk.
If you have been quietly looking for a walking sandal that does not punish you for being a real woman who still wants to spend her mornings outside, this is the closest thing I have found in years.
While the sizes are still in stock.
- Jessica