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13 Affordable Lace-Up Sandal Boots with Block Heels

Lace-up sandals with a thick, chunky heel have been on my mind ever since I spotted the Phobe booties by Mossimo in the shoe section at Target.

Actually, no. That’s a lie. That’s not when my love for this style began at all. The truth is that I fell for lace-up sandal-boots way back in spring 2009 when Ann Demeulemeester revealed her now-iconic lace-up sandals. I’d never seen anything like these hybrid sandal-boots before and they completely rocked my world. The downside? They were $800 when they were released. Eight years later, they’re $1,000.

Source: Mademoiselle by Jamie Lee Burns

My heart aches for these shoes, but there is no way on Earth I will ever have that buttery leather, that curvy heel, that exaggerated shape or that perfect boot height… But luckily, there are plenty of “damn-nears” that will appease my needs. For now.

What really attracts me to these shoes are how unabashedly odd they are. They fulfill half of the needs of a boot and half of the needs of a sandal. They’re casual with their tough laces but the heels make them at least moderately fancy. They look amazing with jeans, with dresses, or with leggings and there’s nothing about the way they look on feet that I don’t like.

Brands have been trying to come up with new ways to recreate this look without completely biting Demeulemeester’s style because that’s uncool and, um, illegal. Many designers opt to remove the heel of the shoe making it into almost a lace-up-boot-sandal-slingback. Others decided to put tiny cut-outs all over the shoes, creating texture and definitely differentiating them from the “original.”

There are lots of ways to fulfill my wild lace-up sandal boot dreams for less than 10% of the cost of the Ann Demeulemeester pair. Here are 13 really cute, really good lace-up sandals for those of you who, like me, fantasize about a comfortable, edgy pair of sandals that aren’t boring.

Some of the options in this post don’t look anything like the Demeulemeester sandals and that’s a-ok. I just love the look of the laces in combination with the walkable, lower heel. It’s the right kind of summer look for me, and maybe for you, too!