Life and sole: 41 of the best flat shoes for party season | Women’s shoes

Mariah is on loop in the supermarket and your local cafe is doing gingerbread lattes. It’s officially the silly season. High street windows are filled with ideas for party dressing. There are sequin dresses and strokable velvet suiting, but look down and you’ll spot something a little more unusual. Gone are the customary towering heels. In their place? Sensible flats.

Now, if you are someone who genuinely loves wearing high heels, fine, no judgement, you keep doing you. But if you are someone who feels they should wear heels, rather than actually likes to, then good news – that way of thinking is very much over.

Velvet pumps (above)

After decades of being indoctrinated into believing heels were somehow superior, representing everything from power to femininity and sex – as immortalised in TV shows such as Sex and the City – fashion has done an about-turn and realised that flats are just as alluring – but with fewer blisters.

Balancing on one leg in the street while attempting to switch from trainers into heels is now considered a bit like eating a sandwich on the go – deeply unchic.

This rational way of thinking started on the catwalks. All the big designer debuts this season, including Jonathan Anderson at Dior and Pierpaolo Piccioli at Balenciaga, championed flats – from sparkly slingbacks to velvet flip-flops. Even the Cannes film festival got the memo. Ten years after ejecting women for wearing flat shoes, this year the Croisette was peppered with flats, including The Substance’s Margaret Qualley in a pair of two-tone Chanel ballet pumps.

Downsizing is easier than you may think. If you previously opted for a stiletto, shifting to a pointy slingback such as River Island’s embellished leopard print flats won’t be too much of a jump scare. For strappy sandal wearers, may we interest you in a mesh slip-on from Loeffler Randall or Dear Frances? And for those who still worry about flats looking frumpy, get excited about embellishment and texture – there’s nothing dowdy about Bimba Y Lola’s sequined ballerinas or Flabelus’s tinsel-adorned versions.

Snakeprint loafers (above)

Ballerinas