JCK Las Vegas 2019: 18 Chic Flats to Save Your Feet

One of my biggest takeaways from last year’s Vegas shows? I saw many more very chic flat shoes and sandals than I did sky-high stilettos on the show floors. Five days of walking around in heels is bound to kill your feet, and attendees and exhibitors alike were having none of that. (Or maybe they switched their footwear strategy after day three, as many of us have been known to do.)

So with JCK Las Vegas and the myriad other orbiting trade shows about a week away, I decided to curate a selection of flats that might be able to arrive in time before you start packing.

I focused on neutrals and neutral-y metallics because they’re likely to go with everything in your suitcase, and the less shoes you have to schlep, the better.

If you’re the type who perennially dresses in black, a shoe clad in a bright color adds the perfect amount of levity (and you use can use the hues as a guideline for selecting that day’s jewelry). Ditto pretty floral patterns and eye-catching embellishments—the alluring fuchsia Rochas slide below being an excellent, outfit-making example.

The most fashionable JCK readers may find some of the options painfully, well…pedestrian (and on the sporty-mom-shoe side). But with the right styling, I think some in our crowd will know just how to make them work and laugh at the rest of us for being vain.

Best of all, some of the styles below are on sale, such as the Mercedes Castillo flats I spotted on a publicist friend during Vegas last year. She had them in pink and I thought they were so cute, I got a pair of my own within days of arriving back in New York City. (Mine are tomato red, and I am wearing them as I write because I literally have been saving them for Vegas 2019 and need to break them in.)

I’m not saying any of these are as guaranteed comfortable as your favorite sneakers or an orthopedic walking shoe, but I do think they’ll offer a respite for achy feet—without compromising the style we all like to flex when it’s showtime.

Speaking of, we want to see the shoes you’re packing and what you end up wearing when walking the shows. Snap and share a pic using the hashtag #jckshoes and tag @jckmagazine.

Here we go, starting with the most bulletproof option, the perfectly packable, eternally foot-saving Repetto Cendrillon ballet flat…