The Loafers That Started a Revolution

It started, as most revolutions do, with a pair of brown loafers.

Okay. Perhaps most revolutions don't start with loafers.

But mine did.

I am 45, almost 46, and I have spent a significant portion of my adult life working in Finance. I did my corporate years. Deloitte left its mark.

Somewhere along the way, I developed a very clear picture of what a CFO was supposed to look like.

Black pants.
Pretty blouse.
Jacket if required.
Black shoes. Black belt.

Repeat until retirement.

Perfectly respectable.

Also, as I recently discovered, spectacularly boring.

Which is strange, because I don't regard myself as particularly boring.

I write. I take photographs. I run. I overland. I'll happily disappear into Botswana, crawl around a factory with a camera, climb into a ridiculously high 4x4 and follow numbers down rabbit holes because something doesn't make sense.

My running wardrobe contains enough pink to be visible from the International Space Station.

And yet every morning I went to work looking like someone had ordered Generic Female CFO.

The cupboard intervention

I decided I needed a few new blouses.

That was all.

Somehow, within 48 hours, I had photographed virtually the entire contents of my cupboard, tried on half of Centurion, chopped my hair from below my shoulders, painted my nails an offensively bright shade of pink and developed an emotional attachment to a pair of brown loafers.

There was also purple.

We need to talk about the purple.

I bought a plum blouse and wore it with charcoal trousers and black slingbacks.

My husband took one look at the shoes and christened them my “slang-in-die-hol-skop-skoene.”

There is no elegant English translation.

Basically: shoes suitable for kicking a snake in the backside.

I wore them anyway.

And people noticed.

“Dressed for success.”

“You look so professional.”

“Jy lyk mooi.”

Someone complimented the shoes. Someone else told me purple suited me.

The day before, wearing pale blue, brown trousers, silver earrings and the aforementioned loafers, a colleague told me I looked beautiful - but couldn't quite explain why.

My boss noticed my hair. And my eyes. And the jacket hanging over the back of my chair.

This was becoming suspicious.

The loafers

Now, about those loafers.

I nearly didn't buy them.

But I kept coming back to them. Dark brown, closed at the front, a little stitching detail.

I liked them.

So I bought them.

Then I wore them for an entire workday.

They were comfortable.

Not "comfortable considering they're work shoes". Actually comfortable.

I walked around the factory. I went to meetings. I climbed in and out of my Tank 300 - which, thanks to a suspension upgrade, now requires a minor mountaineering expedition to enter.

There were no injuries or wardrobe malfunctions.

This is an important performance metric.

By lunchtime, I wanted the loafers in every colour.

And somewhere between the shoes, the purple blouse and the nuclear-pink fingernails, I realised something.

When did professional become a costume?

For years, I had been dressing according to my perception of what a CFO should look like.

Not necessarily according to who I am.

Nobody told me to do it.

It happened gradually.

You learn what looks professional. You see what senior people wear. You find a formula that feels safe.

And then you repeat it.

Eventually the formula becomes a uniform - even if nobody actually gave you one.

And perhaps that's worth thinking about more broadly.

We spend a lot of time deciding what “professional” looks like. Sometimes there are very good reasons for that: safety, PPE, customers, company identity.

But workplaces change. People change. The work itself changes.

Perhaps every now and then it's worth asking whether our old definitions still fit.

Finding Zoë again

The funny thing is that I haven't become less professional.

I still know the numbers.

I still run cash-flow reviews.

I can wear big silver hoops and challenge an assumption.

I can have violently pink fingernails and put together a forensic case.

I can wear purple to meet attorneys.

The clothes weren't providing the competence.

They were just hiding rather a lot of the person who had it.

And that, I think, is what I've been rediscovering.

Tailored but relaxed.
Colourful but grown-up.
Feminine without being fussy.
Creative without being eccentric.
Practical enough for the factory.
Polished enough for the boardroom.
Silver jewellery.
Great trousers.
Interesting blouses.
Comfortable shoes.
And unapologetic flashes of pink.

That feels like me.

The photographer. The writer. The runner. The overlander. The woman who occasionally crawls around a factory taking pictures and sometimes spends far too long investigating numbers that don't behave themselves.

And yes, the CFO.

I don't need to look like my idea of a CFO.

I need to look like Zoë.

Who happens to be one.

And if a pair of brown loafers can remind me of that - and perhaps plant a small seed about what professional really means - I would argue that they've already delivered an exceptional return on investment.

Which, obviously, is exactly the sort of conclusion a CFO would reach.