Shop the Brown Heeled Sandals We'd Actually Wear Handpicked by Claire

I spent about four years thinking black was the only sensible sandal colour, on the grounds that it “went with everything,” which is the kind of sentence you say when you haven’t actually thought about it. Brown is the one that goes with everything. Black sandals against bare summer legs just look like you’re wearing evening shoes to the wrong event. Brown sits against skin like it was always meant to be there, tan or pale, doesn’t matter, it just works.

What I actually want from a heeled sandal in this colour is a proper leather, not the flat, plasticky tan that looks like a biscuit left in the sun. Good brown has depth to it, a bit of variation, maybe some grain or a woven strap that catches the light.

The heel matters more than people admit.

Too thin and you’re gripping onto a doorframe by 9pm, properly wobbling, ask my colleague Priya, who watched me nearly go over on a cobbled bit of pavement outside a restaurant in June and just said “that’s not the shoe’s fault, that’s your ankles.” She wasn’t wrong, but a slightly wider or block heel would have saved me the conversation entirely.

Styling wise, this is where brown earns its keep. It sits under a linen dress without fighting it, works with wide leg trousers where you want the shoe to peek out rather than shout, and does something genuinely nice with denim, especially a dark or raw wash, where black would look harsh and brown just looks considered. Gold jewellery loves it. So does anything cream, camel or white, the whole palette relaxes around it.

Occasion wise I reach for these for anything that’s outdoors, warm and a bit dressed up without being formal. Garden weddings, long lunches that turn into early evening drinks, holiday dinners where you’ve been in flip flops all day and want ten minutes of looking like you tried. They’re not the shoe for a proper black tie thing, but for almost every other summer occasion that needs a heel, brown is doing more work than black ever did, and doing it with less effort.