“Shoes are a funny thing,” said a recently met friend of mine during our very first conversation. “You go into the store, you look at the salesperson, and you immediately wave them away. You say, ‘no thanks, I don’t need any help…I’ll know it when I see it.'”
Do you have a funny relationship with your shoes? And when I say funny, do you understand it as “completely one-sided?”
Maybe you don’t subscribe to the idea that you ought to worship your shoes, or subject your feet to torture for the sake of aesthetic pleasantries. Is it possible that maybe, you don’t believe in fugly comfortable shoes, either? Do you want your shoes to look awesome, and not be modern day torture devices? Maybe, you expect the world of your shoes, and for this reason, you are a picky as hell shoe-shopper.
Well, that makes you my kind of person, and I hereby request permission to view your shoe closet. Not because I actually want your shoes, (what size are you, anyway?) but because I’m wondering just what variety of wedge sneaker you’ve got hanging around there. I know you’ve got at least one pair, and no, this has nothing to do with that well-intentioned, but ill-fated Scary Spice costume from back in the day.
It’s true that this particular style is all over, now. Like I said, you probably own a pair, if not several. But the wide spread nature of the style is a fairly recent development, even as trends go. The first time I saw this style was a little more than year ago now, and they were on the very exclusive feet of one Ms. Alicia Keys.
The original style was made by Isabel Marant, and for a while there, they were a hot commodity. Unless you found yourself atop the billboard charts on a regular basis, you could hardly find them anywhere, and even if you were lucky enough canoodle a pair from some unsuspecting shop owner, you had better have come prepared to drop $800 plus tax on the things.
This was problematic for me, because while the shoes were awesome, I had this strange inkling that $800 should buy me a whole lot more than a pair of sneakers.
“Maybe I can have the shoes plus dinner at Nobu?” I remember thinking once. Needless to day, the answer was not a satisfactory one.
Fast forward a few months, and it looked like everyone and their grandma was wearing a style “inspired” by the original Izzy Marant kicks. It was a bit strange admittedly, but not really all that unexpected. Like I said, the shoes were pretty awesome. But again, this was problematic for me. You see, they were no longer special. And who the heck wants to wear the same exact thing everyone else is wearing? Not me, dude.
It was so then, that I remained wedge-sneakerless, as it were, for the better part of last year. That is, until a few weeks ago, when I walked into a shoe shop, and absent-mindedly waved the salesperson away, as I often did. “I’ll know it when I see it,” I said stoically.
I’m not sure where the lovey-dovey music was coming from, but I heard it, even if no one else did. In a few short minutes, I was at the register, plastic in hand, sporting a smile from ear to ear, and holding these close to my chest:
Why those, you ask? Well, isn’t obvious? They were more than just a blatant knock off. They did what shoes are supposed to do. They captured my attention immediately as something that was undeniably complementary of my existing wardrobe. Key detail #1: Black. I like it. (As if you didn’t know) Key detail #2: Non-cheesy spikes. In other words, they had, as the children say, swag.
And isn’t that the nature of all complicated relationships? In the end, all they need is that je ne sais quoi that turns the wildly irregular into the serendipitous.
Linkage:
- For Rebels (Wanna do the matchy thing?)
- For Purists (The one that started it all)
- For Revisionists (This year’s update)