A Letter From Nell: Why I Chose the Opium
I have chosen shoes for women for thirty-nine years. The Opium is the flat I always wanted to put in their hands.
On the four things I would not do without when I brought the Opium into the shop, how it compares to the flats you have been buying, and why it is $74.95 during our Revival Sale.
Nell · Founder, Nell, Nora & Nina · Stowe, Vermont · August 2026
Me in the Opium Leather Flats today
I am Nell, and I opened this boutique with my sisters Nora and Nina on a corner in Stowe in 1987. Between the three of us we have been choosing what goes on the rail for thirty-nine years.
Spend that long behind a counter and you learn to read a woman trying on flats. She puts them on. She takes a few steps. She looks down. Then she says she will think about it — because she already knows how the afternoon is going to go.
The flats made for women our age have come in two kinds for as long as I have been selling them. The first looks beautiful and comes off in the car. The second you can stand in all day, and it looks exactly like what it is.
I have never accepted that a woman has to choose. The Opium is my answer, and there were four things I would not do without.
1 Genuine leather. Not faux, not synthetic.
Real leather costs us more and it is the first thing most shops quietly drop at this price. It is also the reason the shoe shapes itself to your foot over the first few weeks instead of asking your foot to match it — and the reason it looks better in year three than a synthetic does in week three.
The leather softened after just a few wears. They look much more expensive than they are.
Carol H., Albany, NY
2 A structured square toe
A rounded or pointed toe narrows toward the end, and the end is where the pressure comes from. A square toe holds its width all the way forward, so your toes lie flat. It also lengthens the leg and grounds whatever you have put on above it, which is why everything looks a little more considered with these on.
Love the square toe. It makes even my simplest trousers look a little more put together.Janet W., Greenwich, CT
3 One piece of hardware, doing real work
I did not want a plain flat and I did not want a fussy one. A single bold detail across the front is enough to make the shoe look deliberate rather than default — the sort of thing a woman at the next table asks you about. Everything else is left quiet on purpose.
The hardware is what caught my eye. I’ve had three women ask me where I found them.Patricia D., Boston, MA
4 A cushioned footbed and a sole that bends
The first hour in a flat is easy. Anything is comfortable for an hour. I wanted the one you could still be standing in at the end of the evening, so there is real cushioning underfoot and the sole flexes with your step rather than fighting it. On at nine in the morning, still on at nine at night. That was the brief.
I wore them from breakfast through dinner and never once thought about my feet.Helen C., Providence, RI
The Opium, against the flats you have been buying
You can find a smart-looking flat for seventy-five dollars almost anywhere. I know, because before I chose the Opium I bought a great many of them to see what everyone else was doing. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
Most $75 flats
- Faux or synthetic, sold as good as leather
- A toe that narrows where your toes are widest
- Plain, or busy with detail that reads cheap
- A thin lining, comfortable for about an hour
- A stiff sole that fights your step
- Creased and tired by the second season
The Opium
- Genuine leather that shapes to your foot
- A square toe that holds its width forward
- One bold detail, everything else kept quiet
- A cushioned footbed built for the whole day
- A flexible sole that moves with you
- Leather that looks better with wear, not worse
I refuse to sell a flat that asks a woman to choose between being comfortable and looking like herself. That is the whole reason I brought the Opium into the shop.
Why it is $74.95 right now
I will be plain about it, because you deserve it straight.
This has been a hard year. The making, the shipping and the rent on a corner we have held since 1987 have all gone up, and three sisters do not have a quiet quarter anywhere to absorb that. So we have taken 70 percent off the whole shop and called it the Revival Sale, for the plain reason of keeping the door with our names on it open for a fortieth year.
The Opium was $249.95 and sold at it. It is $74.95 now. We are close to our cost at that price. I am telling you because it is true, and because when the sale ends the price goes with it.
If thirty-nine years of running this little shop has taught me anything, it is that a woman who finds a flat she can actually walk in usually comes back for the second colour. That is the quiet bet I am placing in writing to you at $74.95.
I would rather these go to women who will wear them than sit in a box in the back.
— Nell
Founder · Nell, Nora & Nina · Stowe, Vermont
The Opium Leather Flats
- Genuine leather upper that shapes to your foot
- Structured square toe with room across the front
- Cushioned footbed and a flexible sole
- Bold hardware detail, everything else kept quiet
- Black and brown · sizes 4–9.5
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