I have one pair of knee-high boots: a simple black leather Celine pair with a three-inch stacked wood heel. I bought them on sale at Barneys about five years ago and wear them all winter long. Every single year come November, I dutifully take them to the shoe-repair shop on my corner and beg the owner, Maria, to try stretching the leather at the top a little more. “The leather shrunk back over the summer!” I insist. She looks at me sadly and tells me she’ll see what she can do. You see, I have wide calves, and every time I try to shove my foot into a tall boot I feel like one of the ugly stepsisters in Cinderella doing my darndest to make the glass slipper fit—spoiler alert, it never does.
The average calf width (according to most boot-width measurements) is about 14 inches in diameter. Mine measure 16.25 inches, which means I can barely squeeze into most boots. The Celine pair works with tights, but barely: They are very snug, and depending on the day I can barely get them past the bump of my calf muscle. The problem is worse when I am running more, as my calf muscles are bigger—good for my training, bad for my boots. This year I brought them in to Maria, and she sighed and said, “Honey, I think it’s time to get a new pair of boots.”
So, I decided to look around for wide-calf boots—and the findings were grim. Even the luxury brands that promised to accommodate wide calves were about as wide as my ankle, and the options I did find online were cheap-looking and ugly. Discouraged, I enlisted the help of the Vogue accessories department. We searched high and low and discovered this is a definite hole in the market. Below, the best wide-calf boots Vogue editors consider a worthy investment. If the shoe fits, wear it!
