I Spent a Fortnight Forgetting My Shoes on Purpose: The Forgettability Experiment

Here's a confession from someone who writes about shoes for a living: the pair I own that I'd genuinely struggle to live without is a scuffed pair of leather trainers I bought in a hurry before a trip to Manchester. No story behind them. No unboxing moment. I can't even remember the brand without checking. And that, I've come to believe, is exactly the point.

The Experiment: Counting Thoughts About Feet

The rules were simple, if slightly daft. For two weeks, I rotated through ten pairs of shoes from my cupboard — trainers, loafers, boots, a pair of ballet flats I'd been avoiding, the works. Every time I became consciously aware of my feet during the day, I made a mental note. A pinch at the little toe? That counts. A moment of smugness because the shoes looked great? Also counts. A blissful eight hours where my feet simply didn't register as existing? Jackpot.

The scoring was inverted from what you'd expect. Fewer mentions, better shoe. I called it the Pocket Test, because it works like your phone: the best coat pocket is the one you forget your keys in until you need them. Shoes should behave the same way.

What the Numbers Actually Said

The obvious prediction would be that the £200 pair trounced everything. Wrong. The podium looked like this:

1. The Manchester trainers — three mentions in five wears. Once when I stepped in a puddle outside a Tesco in Leeds (fair), twice for good reasons.
2. A pair of chunky suede chelsea boots — five mentions, all positive. They made me feel put-together, which apparently is a thought about your feet, so points off.
3. The ballet flats — seventeen mentions in one day. Seventeen. I took them off on the bus home and walked to my stop in socks like a person having a small crisis.

The interesting pattern wasn't price or even style. It was friction. The shoes that scored well were the ones where nothing rubbed, nothing squeezed, and nothing required adjusting. The shoes that scored badly were the ones I was managing — tugging heel counters, wiggling toes, planning my walking route around blister risk like some sort of podiatric sat-nav.

Forgettabilty Is a Feature, Not a Failure

We're trained to think a great purchase should be felt. The fashion industry sells us the moment of the mirror, the compliment from a colleague, the unboxing. But a shoe is not a painting. It's a piece of equipment you operate for ten hours a day on pavements that British weather has personally victimised.

Think about the best things in your life by this measure. A good mattress. A reliable kettle. The umbrella that actually survives a gale on Princes Street. None of them thrill you daily. All of them quietly fail to ruin your day, which — once you think about it — is the entire job.

The corollary is uncomfortable: if you're constantly aware of a shoe, something is wrong, even if it's something as flattering as admiring your own feet. Awareness is data. It means the shoe is asking something of you.

The Three-Question Framework for Your Next Pair

You can't rent shoes for a fortnight before buying (though honestly, someone should invent that). So here's the shop-try version of the Pocket Test:

Question one: Can you forget the fitting room? Walk around the shop for a genuine five minutes. Not a shuffle to the mirror. If your brain offers up any commentary — tightness, slip, a weird seam — that's a mention, and mentions compound.

Question two: Does it suit the life you actually live? A beautiful shoe built for a life you don't lead is just a very expensive awareness generator. Be honest about your pavement-to-pub ratio.

Question three: Would you notice them gone? This is the sneaky one. The Manchester trainers are irreplaceable precisely because they've vanished into my routine. A shoe you'd mourn is a shoe that's doing its job invisibly.

A Small Manifesto for Quiet Shoes

I'm not saying stop buying interesting shoes — I've got a pair of red suede loafers that generate dozens of mentions a day and I regret nothing. Occasions deserve awareness. But the workhorses, the daily rotation, the shoes that carry you through a British Tuesday: those should be forgettable. Boringly, brilliantly forgettable.

The best review I can give any shoe is that I forgot to review it. Somewhere out there is a pair that will disappear under you like a good floor. Go find it — and then, ideally, forget all about it.