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Katie Holmes is an ambient A-lister. A woman who became famous pre-internet, it somehow feels as though she’s always been there. On television and film and in campaigns, that is, but also “there” in paparazzi shots and gossip columns and fashion websites and Instagram Stories. She’s an everywoman (dressed in oversized shirts, boyfriend jeans, and Adidas Sambas) that people continue to hitch themselves onto. The soft power she holds over people’s wardrobes can be mapped across the number of women in metropolitan cities who dress themselves in her tomboyish image.
But every now and then, Holmes likes to funk with the jeans-and-a-90s-shirt formula. Most recently, the actor was photographed in a pair of blue loafers (polished and low-heeled) that look simultaneously Tudor prince and disobedient Leprechaun. Perhaps she woke up and thought, “You really want something to emulate? Then how about I slide my feet into this pair of ye olde shoes and wait for the paparazzi to swarm.” At this point, Holmes knows that even the slightest shift in her wardrobe will attract attention: be that her stepping out in Scholl-adjacent cork wedges or changing her nose ring from silver to gold.
Holmes’s little lad loafers are captivating because they remind me of these kinds of medieval shoes, designed to be worn with thick tights and slashed breeches and some kind of extremely lengthy scroll. I would like to see her jump in the air and click her heels like a picaresque Rumpelstiltskin, perhaps after solving a challenging riddle or spinning some straw into gold. It’s like Irina Shayk spending most of the summer in nude-illusion dresses and Martine Rose’s Tudor-toed football boots. We all know what the words “Main Character Syndrome” mean, but perhaps we didn’t expect to also be in one of Grimms’ Fairy Tales.
Shop Holmes’s look, below. Plus, more of our favorite loafers.
