THE PERFECT BIKER BOOT

Clemence Posey in her Madewell numbers [image from Splash via Daily Mail]

I've been searching for biker boots for what seems like forever. It's not an easy job - they can be too clumpy, too tall, too short, too goth - the list is endless. My mother's favourite thing to point out whenever I show her a potential candidate is that the toe turns up too much at the end. It is only recently that I realised pretty much all biker boots do, so I patiently took her through photograph after photograph to illustrate this point. She remains unconvinced. She's not easy to please given that she favours gortex and hopes to combine this pathologically unglamorous material with an elegant shoe. Which is not. EVER. Going. To. Happen.

I digress... I failed in my search for the perfect biker boot last year, and now the rain and chill have once again set it, the search is back on with a vengeance. It is normally sparked by seeing those folk lucky enough to snap up those Gap biker boots many moons ago sauntering past. They are such a brilliant wardrobe staple if only you're lucky enough to stumble across the right pair for you. Off duty models have been showing us for years how practical and stylish they can be for a multitude of scenarios - not least when the rain seems to have set up camp for good over the United Kingdom.

So my heart skipped a beat only a few days ago when Olivia Palermo stepped out in her very own biker boots. 

Image via Zimbio

My love for Miss Palermo's style knows no bounds - even if I would have ditched the beige gilet here - she is perfection. And here she was, striding purposefully across a New York street in what I quickly recognised as (what had to be) my new boots. I embarked on the usual mission to track down who made her boots - given my endless search you have to understand it was no good in this situation simply to be inspired by Olivia's style - I had to find the exact boots because they just looked so right. After exhausting the internet's usually very informative outfit identifiers I came away none the wiser. Yet another biker boot dead end! Until I scrolled through google images and found Olivia Palermo recently sitting in front of a table of bits and bobs at Piper Lime. A hop, skip and a jump over to their website, a cross comparison with the photograph of Olivia in New York, and the deal was sealed - I'd found the boots. And they were discounted!! What a coup. 

Report Jude biker boots at Piper Lime

This is the most tricky thing about biker boot shopping - from this picture I would have worried about the clumpy element (and I'm sure my Mother would have pointed out the upturned toe), but having seen them in the photo above on a real person, I'm much more convinced. They are winging their way to me from the good old US of A as I type and I will, of course, report back to let you know if the search has finally, finally drawn to a close. I am hopeful!

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