mlroseplant

I do like wedges, with reservations. The wedge has to be on the thinner side at the heel, left to right, like these Bruno Magli wedges. I suppose a resurgence of heels of any type is welcome at this point. I'm not holding my breath.

I wouldn't want to wear Louboutins in the snow, either! But what will you replace them with over the winter? It seems that a lot of makers do not make 13 cm--they go directly from 12 cm to 15 cm. I'm guessing if you could somehow find some 13 cm boots, that would be ideal. But who makes such a thing?

That sounds like what you'd see attending our contemporary style church service.

It occurred to me that back in the mid-to-late '90s, which was a dark time for nice looking shoes (not unlike today), the popular heel was a black ankle bootie, typically with a very chunky heel and a lugged platform sole. These came in various heights, with the mildest being probably two inches and the wildest exceeding four inches. Subtracting for the platform, it was probably a three inch heel. Germane to this topic, you used to regularly see young women doing service jobs wearing such shoes. Waitresses, department store clerks, fast food workers, et al. In particular, I can remember going to the grocery store, and you'd nearly always see at least one girl at a cash register wearing chunky heels that were sometimes quite high. Evidently, they must have been comfortable standing for several hours in these, because they certainly weren't required. In fact, in the end, they were apparently banned. This was a trend for the better part of a year, but something happened. I almost guarantee you somebody got hurt somewhere, because suddenly they were gone from this particular store. And I mean suddenly. Like overnight. I would love to know the story behind that.

I don't normally warm up before wearing "regular" heels, but I often think that maybe I should. There comes a point, however, at which I can't walk properly. This begins to occur somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 cm. I haven't really looked in a mirror or filmed myself, but I feel 95% of it is that I can't straighten my knees all the way. Many times, 10 or 15 minutes of pacing around will correct that problem.

Just make sure you're not wearing your vintage watch while doing this. Magnets cause old mechanical watches to do some very strange things.

I have sighted two pairs of stiletto heels last week. The first was part of a Halloween costume, which almost doesn't count, but I think it counts considering the circumstances. One week ago was the last football game of the season at the high school, and therefore was also the last marching band show. The band kids did not wear regular uniforms for this last show, but instead wore Halloween costumes. There was one girl who dressed as a witch, and her costume included stiletto heels. To be sure, she wasn't marching in those heels, she was in the frontline percussion section, playing a xylophone. Nevertheless, she pushed her own instrument on to the field, and then pushed it back off and down the running track, a distance of approximately 150 m each way. The second sighting was at our joint church/college service last week. There was a communion server, age 20 or so, who was wearing stiletto heeled booties and a skirt. I sort of wanted to interview her a bit on the subject, but as an old man, I can't really get by with that. It was fairly obvious to me that she wasn't really used to wearing heels all that often. It was also obvious that she hadn't acquainted herself with an iron in quite some time, if ever.

@higherheels, do you find with your Hot Chicks that you need to warm up extensively before actually walking anywhere? I find that with my higher heels that I have to sort of pace around the house or the garage for about 10 minutes before my ankles limber up enough to take on the real world. I failed to do any of this preliminary warmup (preflight? 😆) the other day when I tried out the Bakers oxfords. I think I might give it another go this weekend.

Being as my "training" shoes are in the shop, I was looking for alternatives, and I settled upon a pair of Bakers oxfords, model name Reissa, that I've had for a very long time. I won't say that I forgot about them, but I haven't worn them in years because I don't love the way they look, and I've always had trouble walking in them. I've always thought of them as having 13.5 cm heels with 2 cm platform, but they somehow feel steeper than those numbers would suggest. Now that I've kicked it up a notch (aiming high), I decided to put them on for a short walk. Much to my shagrin, I still have trouble walking in them, and I decided to cancel my walk, for fear of somebody seeing me struggling in these ridiculous shoes. Why are they so hard to walk in? I went back to the basement, took the shoes off, and pulled out a tape measure. Surely there had to be more to the story. There was. The platform, as you can see, is hidden, and there's no way to determine its thickness except to feel where the footbed is on the inside of the shoe, then transfer that mark to the outside. When I first measured them, I failed to do this at the heel as well, which in this case turns out to be significant. On this particular shoe, the footbed maintains its thickness all the way up to the top of the heel. In fact, the wearer's heel rests a good 1/2 inch higher than the point where the top of the shoe's heel is attached on the outside. Effectively, the shoe's steepness slightly exceeds 13 cm. That accounts for a good deal. No wonder.

I don't feel like stilettos are any harder to walk in than other heels. The only thing that makes them harder is that out in the real world, you have to be more careful where you step.

Come to think of it, pretty much any tree can shed hazards to platforms. I just happened to walk through some freshly downed acorns the other day.

Before I get to the winner, I should go through a few honorable mentions, and maybe some up-and-comers. One pair that deserves a mention is my Prada wooden mules. I call them my "rain shoes" because of the big 4 cm platform--they keep my feet out of the puddles. I must have walked on enough rainy days that somehow I've accumulated 62 miles on them (100 km). Although they truly work for their intended purpose--they do, in fact, keep my feet out of the puddles--the drawback is that they are susceptible to the usual platform weakness. Every imperfection in the pavement, every small, hard object that you might step on, such as a pebble or twig, causes an amplified lateral reaction compared to a single sole shoe that threatens the integrity of your ankles. It might also cause you to look foolish in front of others.

PSA to those who live near oak trees and who are at a latitude where it is now autumn: Platform heels and acorns do not mix well.

I finally bit the bullet and took the ugly shoes in to be reheeled. Yes, it will cost me about the same as what I paid for the shoes, but I do think they make good training shoes. I also took in three other pairs to be refreshed in the heel department. Two pair are pumps that I basically haven't worn since last spring, but had enough "incidental" mileage on them that I didn't think they would make it through the winter, or at least not in presentable condition. In the meantime, I'll have to practice on something a little lower, or risk my one pair of stilettos that is in that height range.

This week was a bit of a change from the normal for a Sunday morning. Once a year, we move our entire church service to the local college chapel and have a combined service with the students and faculty for their Homecoming weekend. Among other things that are different, I don't have to play for the service, but I do have to sing with the choir, which is a combined choir of the college choir and my church choir. When I showed up in my gold Nine West Wilia3 mules, I immediately got some compliments from the college kids, and also from the college choir director, who was singing in the tenor section with me (our church choir director was leading the whole group). He said, "Those are some great back row shoes!" I had never thought of it that way, but it's true. At 5'5", or 165 cm, I need the extra height to be able to see over the taller sopranos. The tall ones always wind up standing right in front of me. That's just how it works. I was very surprised at how many people commented on my shoes in the course of two hours or so. I would say that it's because I'm presenting myself to a new set of people, but that's not completely true. We do this every year. The student body completely changes every four years I realize, but the adults more or less remain the same. Anyway, it was a pretty good Sunday.