The Everlasting Appeal of the Best Mary Jane Shoes

The trajectory of the Mary Jane shoe trend has been fascinating to behold. Characterized by a strap (or many) spanning the instep, the silhouette can shapeshift and hopscotch across aesthetics. One season, the best Mary Janes on the market were like the girlish patent leather pairs you wore in the schoolyard. Fast-forward to a fashion cycle and strappy platform Mary Janes, with a distinct disco attitude, are seasonal best-sellers.

But as a fall 2024 shoe trend, there is no single front-running Mary Jane silhouette. Knee-high boots with studded front straps walked down Christian Dior’s Fall 2024 runways, and both ladylike kitten heels and buckle-front flats popped up at Miu Miu. In the celerity street style circuit, Jennifer Lawrence wears the Alaïa $1,050 crisscross Mary Janes (the Alaïa Strass is also a fashion crowd favorite), and Katie Holmes loves ViBi Venezia’s $150 velvet flats (if you think they look like your old American Girl Doll’s slippers, you’re not wrong). Just a few weeks ago, Taylor Swift gave the shoe trend a French girl kick in a bulky, block-heeled Mary Janes by Parisian brand Sézane.

For non-celebrities, the best Mary Jane flats are comfortable, pain-free everyday footwear. “My tolerance for aching feet has dwindled to almost zero, and I longed for a flat shoe that would tick the ‘I’ve made an effort’ box—Mary Janes do that for me,” says Angharad Jones, a United Kingdom-based freelance writer and fashion content creator. “That little strap across the top of the foot offers more support and practicality [than a ballet flat] and means the shoe won’t slip off at inopportune moments. They’re more sturdy, and, for me, that’s where Mary Janes’s endurance lies,” says the author of the style Substack The Jones Report.

For one silhouette to consistently trend across multiple shoe categories—cushy every day flats, platform heels, and doll-like slippers—is nothing short of remarkable. Los Angeles-based fashion stylist Shea Daspin credits the shoe’s success to its core attribute: the strap. “[Mary Janes] are an iconic silhouette that is as easy to reference as a ‘stiletto,’ [but] the difference is that the wearer isn’t limited to a heel shape or height, as the strap across the front of the shoe is what’s indicative of the style,” Daspin says over email. A ballet sneaker with pink ribbon straps is just as much a Mary Jane as a traditional buckle-front flat.

Plus, transformation is a core part of the shoe’s story: the moniker is believed to be drawn from a character named Mary Jane in the 1902 comic strip, 'Buster Brown,’ which was then pulled from the pages and into women’s footwear. "People are drawn to Mary Janes because they have been around for over a century, and we're used to seeing them repurposed in a different way each decade," says Daspin.

The current decade is a textbook example of the shoe's potential for evolution: Miu Miu’s 2016 take on Mary Janes meant baby pink ballet flats cinched with grommet-punched leather; in the fall 2022 season, Bottega Veneta sold buckle-belted platforms that doubled as surrealist art, and Khaite offered strappy silver pumps for a space-age schoolgirl; and now, for fall 2024, the best Mary Janes can be squishy commuter shoes, $1,000 designer flats, or party pumps that can hold it down on the dance floor.

The best part is that you, dear shopper, have the freedom to choose which of Mary Jane's many iterations you want to strap into.

Shop More Mary Janes for Fall 2024