Today's item comes from one of my favorite categories: SHOES!!!
Lela Rose for Payless Elsby Brocade Pump
Now, at $38.00, these would not have broken the bank account. However, I chose not to buy them. Even though I love peep-toes, I love brocade, I love the silver-y color, and I love the little bow, I said "no."
First of all...faux wood. I do own a pair of wedges with faux wood, and I only wear them occasionally (as in, to an outdoor concert where there may be mud that destroys my shoes.) Faux wood on shoes is more obvious than faux leather (which is fine for vegans...I mean faux leather that tries to look like leather). Maybe nobody else ever pays attention to that kind of thing, but I do, and I don't like faux wood on shoes.
But the silver brocade still called my name...and then I remembered another reason why I should not buy them...my past with Payless shoes.
When I was 20 and had just moved back to this hellhole from Colorado, I worked at a music store, bought all my clothes at Forever 21, and thought that having 100 pairs of cheap shoes meant I was the shiznit. (Not really, but whatever.) I really wanted this pair of grey pumps from a catalog, but they were $300 (which, unbelieveably, was almost my entire rent back then!) and I didn't buy them. But hey! I walked into Payless, and there was a dead ringer (in the way that those plastic surgery people who want to look like celebrities are dead ringers for whatever celebrity they are trying to look like--meaning FAKE and OBVIOUSLY FAKE!)
I paid $12.99 for them and wore them out that night. To a club.
And 30 minutes into it, my friend Michael waved his hand at me, and said "Look up at the camera!" and took a photo. Of me crouching down, drunkenly putting wet napkins under the straps of the shoes. He captioned it "This is a new dance move called 'Ouch my fucking shoes hurt'" and I never lived that story down.
I have dancer's feet. They are destroyed, they have very high arches that require support, they swell from overuse. Even expensive, well-made shoes hurt my feet. So the $12.99 Payless shoes were donated to the Salvation Army the next day. I hope some (lucky bitch) woman with narrow, cute feet found them and is still enjoying them in all their yummy fake-leatherness.
Finally...for $38.00, I can go to DSW and score some real leather shoes that won't give me a blister the size of a silver dollar.
And, where would I wear silver brocade shoes? It's like my dress collection...I have nowhere to wear any of those things, anyway.
1 comment:
You see, I'm the exact opposite. I'm a bit of a bag snob- I can see a bag, and I want to see that it's well made (although I've gotten some great ones from F21, I'll admit...nothing comes close to being as awesome as my Botkiers and my Chloe bag...)
But shoes? Eh! They're just shoes! Aside from my J Crew ones (which I love, by the way- all J Crew shoes are awesome in my book) I typically go cheap. I just do. I am not a shoe person- shoes are always an afterthought, not something I make my outfit around. I don't pay attention to shoes. Levi pays more attention to shoes than I do- "Did you see those?!" he'll say. Nope. I wasn't even paying attention. I understand from a purely aesthetic point of what shoes can do- I'm not going to wear clogs with socks with skinny jeans because that unbalances the whole look- but aside from that, shoes are just...well, kind of there for me to just walk in. They come secondary to the look.
I think I'm also one of the few that can wear shoes from Payless- they fit my super crappy feet well, better than Target shoes.
I'm totally eyeing these wedges, these slingbacks, these booties, and the entire Christian siriano line. The only thing stopping me is that we don't have a Payless nearby (the closest is up in Greenwood Village, argh!) and so I just sit and wait. Hmph.
Go Jane also has some shoes that are cheap and comfy and pretty darn adorbs. I've sent a few orders to them recently and have been happy X 100 with all of them!
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