Late Autumn Walks in Vivaia Shoes

When I saw these boots on Vivaia I thought “that’ll suit me down to the ground!” Most of my clothing and footwear leans more towards fashion than function and this is a sacrifice I am willing to make. My legs and toes will be cold through most of winter, I accept this. But when I saw the Camila boots I immediately fell in love because they looked so cozy—and with fully recycled faux fur lining they actually are really warm! The temperature has been dropping swiftly in my region and these boots kept my toes so much warmer than my usual shoes. The style was something a bit new for me, but I’ve been wearing a lot more brown this autumn and the shearling detailing gave me vague 70s vibes. I thought this style was perfect for 70s inspired minis or more casual outfits when I just want to be warm and snug! Plus you can get these boots on sale right now and take advantage of Vivaia’s Black Friday discounts before the end of the month! Use my code ACH20 to get 20% off one pair of shoes, or 25% off two pairs and 30% off when you purchase three pairs!  One of the things I love about Vivaia is their dedication to environmentally shoes. All of their shoes are made with recycled materials; these boots recycle faux fur and their ballet styles are made from plastic bottles! I’ve tried to dress and shop more sustainably in the last few years and finding Vivaia was a wonderful way to incorporate more environmentally footwear into my wardrobe. Shopping sustainably doesn’t have to break the bank too—several of the other pieces from this outfit are bought secondhand. My jacket I found on Depop last autumn and it’s become a favorite of mine to wear with more casual outfits. So often we get caught up in shopping sustainably we forget some of the simplest solutions are to shop less, wear pieces for multiple years, and look at secondhand shops. I stuck with the brown theme for this outfit with my Camila boots. Sometimes if I’m stuck on styling something I just try to go with matching by color and I was surprised by how many brown pieces I found in my wardrobe that suited these boots perfectly! I wore this out while doing a bit of foraging for winter wreaths and crafts—it’s a great time to collect different dried textures and also twigs and branches to use as the base of your wreaths or crowns. I brought home a bundle of willow branches to use in wreaths and also stumble across a lovely bit of clematis. In the spring the apple blossom clematis is a lovely pink flower on a vine that climbs everywhere and in the winter those flowers turn into the fluffiest seedheads! They make for very ethereal wreaths and have a fun otherworldly look to them. I’m planning on making a mostly white wreath using the clematis seeds and maybe a bit of twinkle lights too. I don’t often photograph my more casual outfits, but on a more relaxed day (or weather too miserable to photograph day) I often put on my reliable skinny jeans and one of Thomas’s sweaters. I love the oversized fit of these sweaters and I think my new boots really suited the vibe and upped the comfort level too! The Camila style is water resistant so they kept my toes dry on this autumn walk. We’ve been getting a lot of rain lately so the ground is very soggy and even flooded in regions, but there’s still a few corners were the autumn color is lingering on. I’m grateful for any color and leaves we still have as winter always feels dull and harsh in this region. Once the leaves are gone everything is so bare and since snow is rare it feels like the earth is truly hibernating until spring. I didn’t head out to forage anything specific on this walk, but lately I’ve been finding so many oak galls. I had never seen any before this autumn, but once I found one I got so much better at spotting them and now I’ve collected around a dozen. Oak galls form when gall wasp leaves its eggs on the developing buds of an oak tree. The way the larvae interacts with the tree forms these unique spherical galls. While that is somewhat interesting what is mostly fascinating is how these galls were used historically. Iron gall ink was the main medium in the Western world dating at least as far back as the Roman Empire and possibly earlier. These galls were a key component in creating that ink that has been used in manuscripts from the Middle Ages all the way up to the early twentieth century! I always feel like I stumbled across a piece of history when I find one.