The strange story of the stolen Tabi

Remember that episode of Sex and The City where a thief forced Carrie Bradshaw to pull her Manolo Blahnik sandals off her feet in broad daylight in a New York City alley and then ran off with the precious loot? Lo and behold, something similar happened to Alexis Dougé, founder of knitwear brand Maddi & Danii. She decided to share her misadventure on TikTok, not on the streets of the Big Apple, like Sarah Jessica Parker's character, but with a man she met on Tinder. "Ladies of NYC, be-f-cking-ware — this man is out here on Tinder and Hinge, and he will steal from you" Dougé began in her video. "He seems like a nice guy and someone I would just probably hang out with for a little fling," she continued, showing some screenshots of messages she had exchanged on the dating app.

But let's take a step back. Alexis, who goes by the name @nextlevellexus on Instagram, meets someone on Tinder who, according to her profile, is a 23-year-old, 6'3" man named Joshua. The two meet for the first time in real life in SoHo before chatting on the app. It goes well, the chemistry between the two seems to be right and they date a second time. This time, as the protagonist herself tells us, something strange happens: "He was pretty persistent about seeing me again and hanging. So, fast forward he comes over and we sleep together. Before we slept together we were chatting about fashion and how he really wants Tabis." The first red flag. The second red flag came in the morning when Joshua persuaded Dougé to lend him her phone on the pretext of wanting to show her a Spotify playlist he thought she would like. It seems like a harmless gesture, but it's actually a ploy for the boy to delete her phone number and all her data so Alexis can't contact him to protest the scam Joshua was up to. Already, because when she woke up, the designer found herself without her prized $990 Maison Margiela Tabi Mary-Jane that her father had given her for her birthday. I looked high and low and I can’t find them anywhere, and said "OK, that’s fine I’m not going to be accusatory", I just wanted to see if he knew where I put them". Then a terrible doubt dawns on her and she goes on the app to check, "I go on Tinder to message him… unmatched, gone and I’m like "Oh no, this b**** stole my shoes."" How did he get them out of the apartment? Probably by hiding them under his oversized clothes. Just like Tabi's, Joshua's phone number had disappeared, but then TikTok came to her rescue. Upon hearing her story, someone contacted her and told her that they had tracked down Joshua's Instagram page.

But before she can get in touch with Tabi's thief, Dougé receives a DM from a third person claiming to know Joshua's girlfriend, who happened to have just received some Tabs from him. "My friend has been dating him for months and he just gave her a pair of tabis!!!!!,” they wrote. “Do you have receipts I can show her?? so freaking out for her rn." It wasn't long before photographic evidence of this unsuspecting friend also arrived with Alexis' stolen tabi. This is also how Alexis got her cheater's mobile number. "I sent him a screenshot of his girlfriend wearing my tabs and hours later I got a text message saying "ight you got me, I’ll give you back your shoes can you take down the video?"... People blame me for something I didn't do," the man replied after trying to offer $500 in exchange for Alexis' silence. In a later post, Alexis explained that she met Joshua at Central Station, where he returned the tabi to her.

The moral of the story? There are no limits to nightmarish Tinder dating. P.S. Break our hearts, but leave our shoes alone!