I HATE buying shoes, with a passion. My boyfriend owns more pairs of shoes than I do. I like shopping for clothes though…
Mostly I hate shopping for shoes because they’re so expensive and never quite have what I’m after. If they do, they’ve sold out in my size ( I have a very common shoe size). After I’ve bought them, I know they’ll rub for ages before they get comfortable, so in the end I don’t bother.
I think a lot of this comes from the fact I only had one pair of shoes at a time when I was a kid, so I still wear the same pair day in day out and almost all my shoes are black so that they go with everything. It never occurs to me to wear a different pair everyday
I have 2 pairs of Bacco Buccis. One I got for $115. One I got for $60 in Nordstrom’s basement. They’re both worth $115.
The difference between a $100 pair of nice mens shoes and $40 Dexters is huge.
For one, nice shoes are shaped like a foot. Dexters are like an oval sole with a mounded roof over them. The difference in comfort and appearance is large.
For two, the nice shoes look classy and cool as they get some wear to them. The dexters fade and look cheap and discolor. Nice shoes just use a better grade of materials.
For three, the build quality is different. A nice shoe doesn’t tear, and should wear better. Based on looks and build, you can wear that nice shoe for 15 years. If you’re doing that with buster browns, you’re a little out of touch or quite cheap.
I’m not sure what more you get out of a shoe when you get into the $500 dollar range. Certainly some style, and maybe a better brand name.
I wear the birkenstocks, Dansko’s and other Professional/Euro/Hippie shoes because I have Old Lady Feet ™.
What I wouldn’t give for a pair of six inch high glitter and flames fuck me Jimmy choo pumps that I could wear without crippling myself.
[Captain Jack Sparrow]
However
[/CJS]
I do not live in an area condusive to six inch fuck me pumps That doesn’t involved getting a twenty in the butt floss and Fabulous Wardrobes and do not have a disposable income at the moment ( if ever again in the next three years or so.) I am so not Ab-Fab and, guess what, it is perfectly ok.
Shoes are therapy. I have taken longer in picking out shoes than what my next car will be. I’ve named my children faster than it takes me to decide on what color of Birkenstock Boston Clogs I will buy next.
There is nothing like the feeling you have when someone says to you, Ohhhh I love your shoes/purse.Where did you get it?!
Nothing.comes.close. Not.even.Prozac.
I love purses, and have had a closet full of them over the years and finally have stopped buying them in the QUEST FOR THE ULTIMATE PURSE because I found I was just buying the same two or three styles over and over and over again that were just re-fitted each year due to the whims of the Gay Men who control Women’s Fashions.
I do not expect to see a collapse of the Purse Industry As A Whole because of my sudden restraint, and I still obscessively look at purses where ever I go. I mean, everywhere.
I love shoes. I love to look at shoes, that is. Buying them has become a bit of a problem for me.
I have picky feet. I have about 8 pairs of boots and shoes that are gorgreous, but that I can’t wear for more than an hour or so at a time because my feet end up hurting too much. I buy nice ones, decent quality, real leather… but my problem is that I’m a 7 1/2, and nobody seems to make half-sizes any more.
7 is just a little bit too tight all over. In 8s, my heel slips out the back constantly. Shoe salesmen/women keep telling me to buy the 7 because they’ll stretch since they’re real leather. No, no they don’t. Or maybe I need to wear them for a whole week before they will, but I can’t seem to last that long before pulling them off and hobbling home barefoot. So, try an 8 with an insole, they say. But that just makes the shoe tighter on top and doesn’t help with the heel slipping out. Extremely frustrating, because I LOVE gorgeous shoes.
Imagine the fun I had trying to find a pair of dressy shoes I could wear to school. I have labs every day and I need to be in sensible shoes - no giant heels, closed toe, non-slip sole. I wear shoes like this most of the time, but I hate the thought of being stuck in pants all year. Took me 4 months of searching to come up with this.
Why don’t I buy expensive shoes? Because if they’re going to hurt anyway, I feel better having spent 40$ instead of 200$.
If you’re a teacher, isn’t your school obligated to provide proper safety equipment? Shoes certainly count. Get them to stump up for a pair of hand-made safety shoes.
Indeed, I would advise anyone who can afford it to get custom-fitted shoes.
No, I’m just a lowly student. I’m old enough that I’ve had some of the younger fry at school ask if I’m a teacher, but that’s a whole other story.
For now, the shoes I have are holding up fine, because I’m only on my feet maybe 4 or 5 hours a day. If I end up working in a hospital after I graduate, I’ll be standing in the lab most of the day (medical technologist), and it’ll be nurse’s shoes for me. I’m too vain to wear them to school now, even though I probably should.
If you ever have the opportunity to travel to South America, make sure you take along a good amount of $$$ for a shoe shopping trip.
Many of the most attractive women’s shoes sold in America are made in Brazil, and the price markup is significant. Whenever my wife and I travel to Rio de Janeiro, she always spends a few days at the mall buying great looking shoes at a fraction of the U.S. price.
She usually buys three or four purses and several new dresses as well. On average, she pays around $15-30 for a pair of shoes that would be $60-$80; she pays $30-40 for purses that would be $150. Fashionable silk dresses that would be a few hundred usually cost in the neighborhood of $50.
Brazilians, in general, are more trendy than Americans, so one will usually find lots and lots of the latest styles there, but one won’t find any “classic look” styles there.
I suspect that for some this would be a motive to select a vacation spot
Bag and shoe hound checking in. I have no qualms whatsoever plunking down one hundred twenty dollars (which is usually about what I pay for shoes, give or take forty dollars) for a beautiful pair of pumps. Most of my sneakers cost more than seventy-five dollars. I love, love, love good shoes. Nordstrom.com, niemanmarcus.com, bluefly.com and eluxury.com are my best online friends.
My foot, much to the relief of my wallet, is a little pudgy, however. That keeps me out of the sexy, and often quite pricey, strappy sandals.
I have a dirty little secret I’ve been dying to confess so I might as well do it here. ninewest.com and bandolino.com are sites from which I’ve been known to pick up a pair or two of, what I like to call, one-seasoners. They’re cheap, they’re trendy and, because the quality is so poor, you can only wear them for about one season anyway. I’ve gotten shoes from bandolino.com for thirty bucks!
I actually did go shoe shopping in Brazil, but I had the same problem I had with everything else I tried shopping for in Brazil: Brazilian women are not as big as I am, it would seem. I couldn’t find anything at all - shoes, clothes, bathing suits - that fit.
Re: Jimmy Choo link
What the heck are ‘house shoes’? Do people actually wear those around the house?
Maybe not, but you sure can feel huge and ungainly.
I wear size 10 1/2 to 11 extra wide and I’m close to 5’11". A pair of “fuck-me” heels becomes, on me, a pair of “Is that a drag queen?” heels. Even if they made cute shoes in my size (and I’ve seen a few styles that looked cute in size 7 but ridiculous in 11), I’d be afraid to wear anything over, say, a 2" heel, because I’ve got bunions. I’ve had surgery on one foot and I’ll do just about anything, including avoiding heels, to avoid doing it on the other. This means I have to settle for clunky shoes.
The attitude I’ve always gotten from salespeople at fancy shoe stores is: if you didn’t want to wear ugly shoes, you wouldn’t have grown your feet so big.
I suppose you could say I’m not a shoe person. I don’t know how I’d feel if I hadn’t been embittered at a young age.
Has anyone seen the Manolo Blahnik Sedaraby D’Orsay shoes? I think they were featured on an episode of SATC. As I said before I’m not that much of a shoe person, but oh my God I want them.
Unfortunately they’re impossible to find now, and selling for double their original retail price on eBay. I’m hoping they’ll RE-re-issue the damn shoe or else I’ll have to put them on my Christmas wish list.
I’ve definitely seen Choos in at least a size 10.5, and a quick look on eBay found them in a sizes up to 11.5 as well.
I’m a guy, and here I come with my most embarrassing SDMB confession of all time.
I spent $150 for a pair of shoes once, in 1998.
However, they were awesome Doc Martens two-tone spectator shoes, black and white, like super-retro wingtips. Only these are heavy duty leather, with the thick Doc Martens “bouncing soles.” I have pretty wide feet, so I could never have fit in a pair of pointy-toed wingtips with a similar color scheme. I bought them at the height of the new swing music trend, when I was going to see bands all the time and DJing swing dances and playing saxophone in a ska band, because they were damn cool, and they were perfect for my “hipster doofus” image. But I was in college at the time, and that seemed like a ludicrous amount to spend on shoes.
However, I love those damn Docs so much, I still have them today, they’re still in beautiful condition, and I only wear them for “special occasions”–concerts, dates, weddings, etc. I think I’ve more than gotten my money’s worth, but that black and white spectator style is so timeless, I intend to keep wearing them forever.
Spending more than that on shoes just boggles my mind, especially for more ephemeral fashions and trends. But hey, I’m not a big fan of spending money in general.
Another guy here. I wish I could buy cheap shoes. But I have
Short feet
Wide feet (3E-4E depending)
Flat feet
High instep (My foot is very tall)
Plus as a kicker I broke my left heel 10 years ago.
So as a result I have to buy good shoes. For boots Doc’s are out, won’t fit. Think Redwings at $185-225 a pop.
For workout shoes think New Balance at $75-110 a pair
For everyday wear I wear Oakleys at $90 each. I do buiy these at an outlet so then cost less.
Oh and to add insult to injury to each of the above eacept the Oakleys I have add an aftermarket insole at $20-35 each
::: sigh:::
I tried a pair of these on the last time I was at the Oakley store I want them! They felt wonderful!
I just read that Paris Hilton has size 11 feet so surely they must make fancy shoes in her size. Plus, many models are over six feet and have long, lanky limbs; surely theymust wear large sizes as well?
You know, I’ve never really gotten the whole big foot phobia. I’m not even 5’5" and I wear a size nine. I don’t think my feet look like boats and, on my lists of things to change about myself (thighs, etc.), my feet don’t even register. So if you’re six inches taller and wear a shoe two sizes bigger, I think it would look fine. Truthfully, when I see someone with little feet, I think they look unblalanced…
I have $30 reeboks, the only reason I got reeboks is because the $12 pairs of shoes at kmart fell apart too easily.
I don’t have the shoe fetish, I would much much rather buy electronics equiptment. If I had $1500 to throw around I could get a good deal on a used TiVo, MP3 player, Laptop w/WiFi, GPS tracker, a new CPU, HD and RAM for my desktop and still have money left over.
$1,500? John the Baptist on a fucking rubber crutch! I have never spent that much money on a firearm. Then again I just might when my bonus check arrives Friday
I’m a guy but damn. My tastes are really simple. 13EE feet so I wear new balance sneakers and have never paid more than $65 for a pair. For work/dress I wear ropers. Shitkickers will know what I mean, it’s what they used to call a wellington boot. Rounded toe, very plain. I get mine from Cowtown since their Mexican made boots are $50 while a similar pair of Justins is at least $100. Earth tones now, black, taupe, gray and brown. When bright colors were in I had a pair in fire engine red. I’d like another pair like that.
I don’t actually have a problem with the size of my feet. I figure that if they were much smaller, I’d be unable to stand up unassisted. But there’s something about how a pair of pointy-toed 3" or 4" heels looks on my that I think is just ridiculous. Maybe it’s the way they make me tower over 98% of the population, or the extra length that a pointed toe box requires, or maybe shoes that are designed with a certain size in mind don’t necessarily work as well in a much larger size, but I haven’t seen any that I think look good. Of course, I’m not exactly downcast about it; most high heeled shoes hurt my feet, and I think life’s too short to put up with aching feet if you don’t have to.
qts, I’ve never thought about having shoes made for me, but I might look into it. I even found a website for a custom shoemaker in Santa Fe - and the prices aren’t wildly unreasonable, given the quality (and some of the prices mentioned in this thread).
Bleh, I had a loooong reply typed out and then the whole site went down.
Yeah, my cubicle mate used to bitch about the size of her feet too. She’s 5’10" and wears the same size I do. I finally figured out that what really bothered her is that heels made her taller than her boyfriend. I hear you about the heels tho’; they do take getting used to and a pair of flats will always be comfier. But I’m glad I have the option. Hmmm, maybe I like heels because I’m not particularly tall…
Here’s a recent relevant article that says shoe retailers are not keeping out with the changing shoe sizes of American women making it very difficult to find shoes in the larger sizes. Pity the poor 13-year oldmentioned in the last paragraph who’s 6’4"!! and wears a size fifteen. :eek:
BBVD, those shoes sound great and totally worth the cost. I have a pair of (men’s) Tredairs (they’re made in an old Doc’s factory) that cost about as much and I know will last me forever. I wore them touring NYC and the stiffer shoe meant my feet were much better supported than those of my friends who wore sneakers.
Padeye, You’re not a civil engineer, are you? Every single (male) civil engineer I’ve ever met wears those boots. I’d never seen 'em until I moved to Texas but they must be offcial footwear of Texaa A&M…
Personal Shoe report: (yes, yes, it’s obvious I’m bumping this thread for my own personal shoe vanity, I’ll admit it).
I’m wearing the round toed pumps cowgirl liked today and they look great with the new, longer pencil skirts.
I recieved the flame shoes and they don’t fit. (I own other shoes by that brand so I thought I was safe ordering off the web.) Oh, well, back they go.
And I finally located replacements (I wore out the other pair) for my favorite Bettie Page fetish pumps. Just in time for Halloween!
(I own other shoes by that brand so I thought I was safe ordering off the web.) Oh, well, back they go.