When I was a travel writer, I was obsessed with shoes. Well, to be frank, I was fairly obsessed with shoes before that, too. For a time in the early 2000s, I was a sneakerhead. Unlike most sneakerheads, however, I wasn’t hunting for rare Air Jordan colorways to display behind glass in my parents’ living room. Instead, I lusted after obscure models, like handball shoes you could only import from Europe, or a space-age, stripe-free Adidas slip-on in white leather. And I actually wore them, because what was the point otherwise?

But when I began to travel extensively, and for weeks or months at a time, my footwear needs shifted. On these long trips, I needed to pack light — i.e., bringing a single pair of shoes that could function in any situation. And I really mean any situation. In the span of a few days, I might go from wandering Moroccan souks or hiking the Austrian Alps to dining at the home of a wealthy couple I’d just befriended, or blending in at an art-gallery opening, or working a sailboat in the Caribbean. Across Asia, and when passing through U.S. airports, I’d need shoes I could get off and back on quickly. I wanted shoes I could wear without socks if I had to.

I don’t think I ever really found the ideal pair of shoes, though I cycled through many pairs over the years. But the approach soon began to extend to my entire wardrobe: How could I dress on any particular day and be ready for whatever might happen? Every morning when I woke up, I truly did not know where I might be come bedtime; this was the most exciting, and sometimes challenging, part of the travel writer’s job — relying on spontaneity, hoping for serendipity, improvising, accepting, exploring every possibility.

To embrace that, however, was not always a natural act. And while I was pretty good at it, it was still an act I had to work at, and so I had to dress the part. I bought clothes that were comfortable, sometimes athletic, but not too casual; I wore unstructured blazers and sporty polos, as if to say I didn’t take these nods to formality too seriously. I avoided logos, graphics, brand names. I appreciated hidden pockets and understated backpacks. To outsiders, I didn’t quite appear to be a local, but also not quite a tourist. To learn which I was, you’d have to approach me. I was ready for any intrigue.

Maybe I was over-prepared. Travelers who are more confident, more imposing, and simply better-looking than me — which is, of course, most travelers — probably don’t need to make such strenuous efforts. They can show up as is, in flip-flops or combat boots, in a sundress or a three-piece suit, and not worry whether they’ll fit in to wherever the day may lead. But that wasn’t me. I knew my limitations. And I had to hedge against them.

In the years since my travel-writing heyday, my personal style has evolved into, or maybe been subsumed by, gorpcore. First defined in 2017 by Jason Chen in New York Magazine, gorpcore¹ embraces an elevated outdoorsy aesthetic: puffers, fleece, trail runners, climbing pants; North Face, Patagonia, Teva, Arc’teryx. The clothing isn’t always blatantly technical, but it could be, even though it is always also stylish. More important, Chen wrote, is what it telegraphs: “an enlightenment beyond urban, bourgeois concerns: I can survive perfectly fine outside of the city — and in style, thank you.” Gorpcore really had its moment in 2021–2022, when the pandemic had eased and we all rushed to get outside as often as possible. Gorpcore hit a peak and subsided, but lately it’s been mounting a crampon-assisted, gusseted-crotch comeback, now less the trend du jour and simply another fashion tribe.

My version of gorpcore is definitely in the cosmopolitan-traveler vein, fit for trekking across the Adirondacks or across Brooklyn, at home at Clover Club or in the Chase Sapphire Lounge. My outfit for running errands yesterday, when it was sunny and 32 degrees Fahrenheit, with a wind chill of 17, was typical:

So, as you can tell, I was ready for anything, from a trek through Central Park or a breaking-news event to long stretches of downtime or an unexpected disaster.

None of which took place. I got on the train, visited an office in midtown, had lunch, bought a bottle of Japanese whiskey (Akashi remains affordable), and came home. I was comfortable and warm, yes, but also unchallenged. There were no puddles in my path, the wind died down, and I didn’t even have time to open the novel.

It has been like this for many years now: The mindset I evolved during my travel career remains in place, even though my free-range lifestyle has contracted into lightly caged domesticity. And still I persist in this approach, in part because I don’t relish replacing my whole wardrobe, but also because another mindset has crept in and replaced that of the travel writer:

I want to be ready to run.

I can’t say whether this is a pandemic attitude, or a dealing-with-fascists attitude, or just an attitude I’ve always had, growing up Jewish in America. But these days it’s more crystalline than ever: I feel like the moment may arrive when it’s time to depart. Flee the block, flee the city, flee the country. I imagine disasters — crumbling buildings, skyscraper fires, ICE raids, hurricane-backed floods — and I imagine them hitting so swiftly that there is no time to make a deliberate getaway. I don’t know if the disasters will be targeted or impersonal. I don’t know if they’ll be overtly deadly or implicitly so. I don’t know if they’ll happen at all or just in my head. Still, I want to be ready.

I don’t think I’m being paranoid. Terrible things have happened in the recent past; they’re happening right now, depending on where you look. Is it crazy to make sure that if I’m stuck outside unwillingly I won’t die of exposure, or of boredom?

At the same time, I have limits. I don’t have a go-bag. I’m no prepper² — I’ll never be organized enough to cache food at a storage locker in Vermont. I own no weapons but my wit and my knife roll, both of which need sharpening. If the shit hits the fan in a way that requires a 4×4, a shotgun, and a bunker, I’m doomed.

Instead, the apocalypse I’m preparing for is the one we’re already witnessing: a slow-rolling, upper-middle-class doomsday of deportation and evacuation, bureaucracy and neglect. When it comes — or when it comes for me — I want to be ready, my papers safe in waterproof pouches, my devices charged, my undergarments wicking moisture away from my sweaty zones as I plead with officials to let my family through to, well, if not safety then at least the next, fantastic phase of our burgeoning refugeehood. If I can look good doing it, then all the better. I’m ready for a spot on the cover of GQ’s stateless edition.

Really, my approach to fashion hasn’t changed in decades, not since I was a teenager. Then as now, I wear clothes to hide myself — the nakedness of my fears, my anxieties, my awkward insecurity. Perhaps, I have always hoped, by adopting a particular costume, I can get people — friends and strangers alike — to see that Matt instead, to interact with whoever they imagine him to be: chill, adaptable, confident, amusing. Because I can play that Matt, all those Matts; I’ve had years of practice, you know, so much that even I forget the distance between us. Until, sometimes, even though I’m fully clad in my armor, warm and dry and cool and at ease, I’ll find myself in a situation no outfit can protect me against, where my method fails me, where I simply can’t relate or perform or participate the way I’ve dreamed it. I’ll clam up, retreat into myself, and inhabit the Matt the clothes are meant to mask.

Even then, though, I remain prepared: In my dark and neutral tones, my clean lines and subtle silhouette, I am able to turn invisible! A shift, a slump, a downcast look, and no one notices me at all; for as long as I like (which is not very long) I can stick around, unbothered and unchallenged. And then, when I’ve had enough, when I finally give up on myself, I can flee without a word, my Vibram soles silent on the carpet as I creep to the door, and freedom. No one sees me go, but if they could: Goddamn, what a beautiful sight! 🪨🪨🪨