Tara Maria Gonzalez is a style writer with five years of experience covering celebrity looks, fashion week trends, and market. Since 2019, she's been writing for InStyle where you can find her musing about celebrities' pantsless date night looks for InStyle's signature Look of The Day series or obsessing over multiple things on sale. She has also previously worked as a fashion writer and editorial producer, writing fashion features and producing and styling numerous photoshoots while interviewing everyone from Stella Bugbee to Alexa Chung. Tara's interested in why we wear the things we wear and what that says about who we are. At any given time she is probably busy justifying an impulse vintage designer purchase as "part of her job" or overanalyzing the return of low-rise jeans.
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The other day I went into the archives of my life — aka Facebook photo albums — and found a photo of me in college, lying on the grass outside of my friend's dorm, a pair of cork wedge sandals clutched in my hands. I used to love those shoes and was inspired to buy them after watching an episode of Gossip Girl where Blair Waldorf wears a pair by Michael Kors. My love for the sandals, though, really started in 2002 when Jennifer Lopez wore them (complete with tiny shorts and an oversized hat) in the "I'm Gonna be Alright" music video.
The shoes were one of the sexiest styles of the early 2000s, but they've since fallen out of favor. Maybe it was Snooki constantly tripping while wearing them in Jersey Shore, or just the simple fact that cork reminds too many people of opening up a bottle of wine. Regardless, they couldn't be more different than another shoe of the summer: the Adidas Samba. Unlike Sambas, cork wedges aren't particularly easy to walk in, they've never been worn by soccer players, and they've yet to become part of Bella Hadid's footwear rotation. But they are unexpected, underrated, and apparently on the up-and-up.
Jennifer Lopez has been wearing cork wedges while honeymooning in Capri, and Amal Clooney also recently wore them on vacation while out to dinner with George Clooney in the south of France. I, too, have found myself gravitating more towards cork wedges because I notoriously cannot resist a platform — and there's something about how rarely I see the shoes that's making me fall in love with them all over again.
Lopez styled her Gucci pair with a floral-print poplin dress and an Hermes Kelly wicker bag that typically retails for around $54,000. Amal Clooney wore hers with a cut-out Emilio Pucci dress and a pair of oversized Max Mara sunglasses. As for me, the last time I wore cork wedges was with a bandage dress and a red solo cup. But this time around, I'm going with a simple vintage slip dress and an oversized bag, which has become my go-to summer uniform that I'm now realizing was only missing a pair of these debatable, unfairly forgotten sandals.
Shop the unexpected comeback trend of 2022, below.
Shop now: $150 (Originally $200); nordstrom.com