When I started to fall in love with fashion a few years ago, the first things that really stole my heart were the shoessome Fall 2007 Burberry Prorsum studded sandals to be specific. Nothing can make me melt quite like a pair of perfectly constructed statement shoes, and I could spend hours browsing the footwear floor in Bergdorfs or looking at the shoe porn archives on Jak & Jil.
In the time that I’ve spent working in the industry and living in New York, I have slowly become immune to the fact that, yes, some of the unnaturally-shaped shoes I lust after are pretty strange looking. Not unattractive, necessarily5-inchers have a way of making your legs look impossibly longjust weird. Miu Miu cat-print platforms might seem totally normal to me, but to others, not so much.
Considering my slight obsession with said footwear, I didn’t really have any funky pairs myself, so this season I picked up some Julian Louie for Aldo tribal wedges and couldn’t wait to wear them. I took them for a spin for the first time yesterday, and was surprised by two things: first, how incredibly easy they are to walk in (!), and second, how many befuddled passersby were staring at my feet.
I wouldn’t say that I get “checked out” on the street very often, and while I would like to think that all the new attention is from people looking at me in an “oh my! What a classic beauty” way, in reality they’re probably just wondering, “what the eff are those bricks that she’s wearing on her feet?”
The reactions have ranged from enthusiastic tourists about my age who were wondering where they could buy them, to a creepy middle-aged man who asked me to twirl around so he could get a 360 degree view, to very, very confused guys and gals of all ages whose necks nearly snapped from turning to get a better look as they walked by.
My favorite encounter thus far happened on my lunch break, when I caught an adorable, bespectacled gentlemen in his mid-60s staring at my shoes and shaking his head, so obviously I called him out about it. Our exchange went a little like this:
Me: Are you checking out my shoes? They’re pretty funky, huh?
Man: Yeah… they suit you though.
Me: Oh, so you like them?
Man: I’m not sure that I do, but I like them on you.
I take a compliment where I can get it, so I smiled, satisfied with his answer, but do you guys think my shoes are really that weird? Or is this all in my head?
Wedge peeptoe booties in a tribal pattern, weird? No. Not really. They’d be a bit of a kaleidoscope to catch in the corner of your eye when walking past though!
Personally, no — they aren’t that weird… BUT growing up in NJ suburbs you were definitely stared at if you wore ANYTHING that differed from what Abercrombie had in their store that season. I once came to school in bell bottoms (circa 1997) but changed into my gym sweatpants after a girl made fun of them
Fabulous shoes – totally not weird! I’m in love with them!
Wearing the spiked freddy Louboutins, even in a “big” city like San Francisco People give me a bunch of stares, and “oh WOW! Great shoes”. You would have thought people would just glance and look past but no.