I Finally Learned How to Style the Tricky Sneakers Every Scandi It Girl Loves

Every time I go to Copenhagen, I take approximately 100 photos of butter (no one plates butter more artfully than the Danes) and 1000 photos of random people on the street (no one puts together an outfit more creatively, either). I just love how they do life over there. They layer and lather things on in ways I wouldn’t naturally, and I’m constantly in awe, snapping photos to remind myself of better, more beautiful ways to do things.

Last summer, when I was there for Copenhagen Fashion Week, I noticed a common theme in nearly all the photos I took of stylish girls whose outfits I wanted to copy: they were almost all wearing Salomon sneakers (while also almost always sipping orange wine, seated beside slices of bread and a plated mountain of luxuriously layered butter, of course).

It made me pause because I’ve always loved Salomon sneakers but struggled with styling them. The first hurdle is simply that I’m not a sneaker girl. My default shoes are ballet flats. When in doubt, I reach for something dainty and ladylike—that’s the style I wear most often by far. But when I see the girls in Copenhagen wearing Salomon sneakers, I can’t help but feel like I’m missing out on something.

It’s not just that the sneakers look cool (with their signature waterproof membrane casing that makes them appear caught in a funky web of color), but also that they lend an effortlessly sporty vibe to any outfit. That makes them especially fun to style with floor-scraping skirts and tops with sleeves that feel comically oversize.

I recently unearthed my favorite pair of Salomons: a pink collaboration with Sandy Liang that caused a small but much-anticipated frenzy in downtown New York when they dropped (they sold out almost instantly). I also own the new XT-Pathway 2 sneakers in all white. Lately, I’ve been going on longer walks now that the weather’s finally nice, and I’ve been craving shoes that make more sense for 10,000 steps than my baby blue Chanel ballet flats. It felt like the right time to add the Salomons back into my rotation—especially now that I think I’ve finally cracked the code on how to style them.

The key is to style them with pieces that feel like their complete opposite. On their own, Salomons are sporty and casual, but when paired with something like, say, a Sandy Liang sweatsuit covered in fabric rosettes—as I do—they lose that sturdy, serious edge. It’s that kind of funky, childlike zest the Danes love, and it’s hard to bottle. Yet wearing my Salomons this way—with the cutesy pieces in my wardrobe—feels like the closest I’ve ever come.

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