Review: The Everlane Day Heel

Welcome to my Wednesday review series! Starting now, you can find a new review on my blog every single week. First up? The ever-popular Everlane Day Heel.

It’s no secret that the Everlane Day Boot is my all-time favorite shoe. Since I got my pair last fall, I’ve worn them at minimum four times per week. But as is often the case with winter, I’ve been going stir crazy with my cold weather shoe collection (which is just two pairs of shoes, actually) and I’m craving a little variety. Knowing how much I love the Day Boot, I figured the Day Heel would be an equal contender. I asked Everlane if they would send me a pair to review, and they said yes.

Read my review of the Everlane Day Boot here.

A little background: The Day Heel was one of the first products in Everlane’s now sprawling Day family, and it was massively successful upon first release. Headlines like “We tried the shoe with the 25,000 person waiting list!” were all over my social feeds for weeks when they first came out. Over the next year Everlane released the style in new colors, new leathers, and even recently dropped a high-heeled version. The shoes that followed – the Day Mule, Day Glove, and Day Boot, to name a few – each had their own moments in the sun, but none shone so brightly as the Day Heel.

I’ve been wearing mine pretty consistently for about two weeks now, and I have to admit: they’re really good.

I opted for the newish Pecan Stacked colorway, which is kind of a brown/blush color with a deep brown stacked leather heel. For my skin tone, I think it’s a great play on a nude pump, which I always find makes my legs look longer (and given that I’m only 5’2″, this is usually a priority for me when it comes to shoes).

The Day Heel comes in 10+ colors (some of them in Everlane’s Choose What You Pay aka SALE section for as low as $85) and they’re constantly churning out new ones. So, if you don’t see a color you love, just wait a few months. p.s. Everlane, if you could please release the regular Day Heel in the Ivy color, you would have one appreciative blogger over here!

Over the last two weeks, I’ve worn the Day Heel in various states of formal and informal dress – to work, to a meeting, to the grocery store, to walk my dog – and I think they’re very easy to style up or down. They are more of a warm weather shoe, but we get mild enough winter days in DC that I can still get away with wearing them a few times a week without risking frostbite.

Outfit details: Everlane Silk Blouse (thrifted, similar here), Everlane High Rise Skinny Ankle Jean, Mid Blue ($68, wearing size 26, thrifted), Everlane Day Heel, Pecan Stacked ($160, wearing size 6, gifted), GLDN Poise Necklace ($38+), Kate Spade Heart of Gold Idiom Bangle ($32).

QUALITY

One of the first things I noticed when I started buying nicer, more expensive shoes is how much heavier they are. I guess nice leather and good construction materials are a lot weightier than plastic and glue and whatever the heck else my other shoes are made out of.  Taking these out of the box, they are heavy and soft in the most delightful, luxurious way. The leather is buttery just like the Day Boot, but I do think it’s a little more robust on the Day Heel. I’m not as worried about scratching these up.

FIT

I went with my usual size 6 on these shoes because the website says to take your true size. I found them tight at first, especially around the toes and the little stretchy ankle part, but after about two days of wear the leather relaxed enough that I found them to be perfectly comfortable – no digging or pinching. Like the Day Boot, I’m not sure I’d recommend these for folks with wide feet, or at least I’d suggest sizing up.

My single complaint about the fit is that even with the stretchy bit at the heel, they do tend to slip off the back of my foot when I’m walking at a downward incline or down the stairs/escalator (and if you’re in Washington DC, you know how seriously people here take walking down an escalator – no mercy for those who need to stop and adjust their shoes!).

COMFORT

After the short break-in period, I have to say that I find the Day Heel to be just as comfortable as the Day Boot – by which I mean, extremely comfortable. I have a standing desk at the office that I like to use for a few hours in the morning, and it used to be that I couldn’t use it if I was wearing pumps that day, but I haven’t had any trouble using the standing desk with the Day Heel. Living in the city and working in the heart of downtown DC, I do a LOT of walking, and again, the Day Heel has proved to be a trusty companion for my daily half-mile walk to the metro station and back, plus all my other pedestrian excursions.

CARE/CLEANING

I have not been especially nice to these shoes. Since I can’t bear the idea of waiting to wear a new thing once I’ve received it, I put the Day Heel through a lot from the get-go. I wore them in the rain, the icy muck, in piles of road salt, and on one accidental occasion, in the snow. Now, they need some TLC.

Leather care is a really important aspect of owning leather shoes. You can quickly ruin a pair of shoes by careless with them, or you can take a few easy precautions and have them last for decades. I used to be the former, but am now trying hard to be the latter. Lucky for me, my husband has become somewhat of a leather-care enthusiast, so I am equipped with the tools and knowledge needed to get my shoes looking like new again after some winter abuse (thanks, honey!).

Here’s what I recommend:

• Clean – brush your shoes off with a soft shoe brush to remove any dirt and debris, then, wipe them gently with a damp cloth to get anything the brush couldn’t (for me, this is usually spots of caked-on mud). It’s good to gently brush your shoes after every wear so that dirt doesn’t have a chance to build up and damage the leather.

• Moisturize – you can use a leather conditioner like Venetian Shoe Cream to clean your shoes, protect them, and give them some much-needed moisture. My husband says you really only need to do this once per season. When I showed him how my new shoes were starting to look a little crinkly and dry in places, he recommended the shoe cream to moisturize the leather and to help make sure the crinkles don’t turn into cracks. (Just a quick note, I would NOT use this conditioner on my Day Boots because the leather is much softer and I don’t want to compromise the finish.)

• Protect – keep your shoes in a dust bag when you aren’t using them to protect them from dust and scuffs. In the summer, I actually kept a dust bag and a pair of flip flops in my tote bag in case I needed to do a quick shoe change while I was wearing my beloved Nisolo Mariella Mules. It’s not as practical to do this in the winter because the shoes are bulkier and dirtier and the logistics of a quick-change are way more complicated when it’s 14 degrees outside, but still. At least check the weather before deciding which shoes to wear tomorrow.

• Rest – I didn’t know this until recently, but it’s actually not great for your leather shoes to wear them every single day. They’ll do better with at least a day of rest in between. That was a hard pill for me to swallow as someone who is sort of obsessed with figuring out how few pairs of shoes I can narrow my collection down to.As I mentioned, I only really had two pairs this winter. I was wearing my Day Boots nearly every single day,and they looked fine, but after letting them rest for a few days while I was testing out my Day Heels, I noticed that they looked a lot fresher after, like the leather had a chance to bounce back to life. I’m glad that now I have these two pairs of leather shoes to choose between for daily wear so that I can wear one while I let the other rest.

Tl;Dr

The Everlane Day Heel is a great shoe that is worthy of its reputation. These are definitely a new wardrobe staple for me, and I think you’ll see them pop up in my outfit posts frequently. Also, if you’re going to spend a lot of money on shoes, you owe it to yourself to learn how to take good care of them.

Questions? Let me know in the comments! And don’t forget to check back next Wednesday for another review.

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