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No problem. Haven't worn a watch since the sixties. Besides, I don't think the magnets are that powerful.

Wow! Congratulations! It must have been fun to be going out to dinner in them and having it feel relatively easy! That’s brilliant progress. i am hoping to be getting back into my 12cm boots later this week - and in a warmer boat!

I'm too young to have already worn them at the time, but I think I know which styles you mean. They indeed seem very comfortable and suitable for long standing times. I would also be interested in the cause of this sudden ending...

@mlroseplant I had the same feeling when I bought my Hot Chicks. I was able to straighten my knees, but it felt like it was on the limit. Wearing them at home very often helped for that. @Shyheels I'm looking forward to hearing from your eyperience of getting into your 12 cm boots again. I'm pretty sure you will feel at least a minor throwback, at least that's my experience. By the way, yesterday I wore the Hot Chicks out again for dinner. It felt way easier than the last times, the regular little practice walks around the block helped so much!

l am loving these Fernando Berlin boots.

I’m still very much in the world of heavy suede OTK boots with 8cm heels - I’m hoping to get my heating sorted in the next week or so and can get back to practicing in my stilettos. I just hope that in the interim I’ve not lost whatever modest gains I’ve made …

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.

No, these have a wide strap above the ankle. I get to se the woman wear hers every week and just can't take my eyes off those black leather points. The light coming in the windows makes one side glow to help define the shape. Two women were dancing in black mary janes but with black socks. YUCK!

Once my nail bed on some fingers started to have issues, I had to get the nails covered with acrylic to hold them together; then you need to cover the acrylic with gel. That was 10 years ago. It took awhile to get use to having colored nails. I get compliments from both men and women, and may people will compare my nails to their....really no comparison You could start with a translucent gel with a very little color. Or you could ask your nail tech to do a magnet gel on your baby fingers. I think she would be excited to do it. The polish is sometimes called 'cat eye' when you use a different magnet to get the total cat eye effect. Cat eye nail polish works by using special formulas with metallic or iron particles that are pulled into patterns by a strong magnet. Google it and see all the effects you can get. It very similar to the special effects of some car paint jobs in the 70's

That sounds very clever and cool indeed! While I wear color on toes almost 100% of the time, I’ve not mustered the gumption to venture beyond clear gel. However, the aforementioned nail tech drops yet another hint from time to time.

@mlroseplant No, I don't do any warm-up before going outside. But I put them on first before the rest of the clothes, so there's already a bit of standing in them before walking. What makes a difference is weither I been at home barefeet all day or already been out in heels all day. Even if I only wore lower heels like 8 cm all day, the transition is easier.

Speaking for myself, I find that walking around for a few minutes in my 10cm heels is a good warm up for wearing my 12cm ones - although if I do I have a way of becoming distracted and forgetting to change boots.

It’s interesting. It would be fun to know what their perception of heels is, especially stilettos. As you say, it’s not something you can sidle up and ask without looking like a creep. But from a sociological and cultural viewpoint, it would be an interesting question.

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.

Sometimes when I’m wearing my 12cm boots I think of your Hot Chicks and try to imagine that extra centimetre of elevation. It would certainly defeat me

That's a cool pair, I somehow like the style. Yes, they seem to be as steep as my Hot Chicks. Glad I'm not the only one feeling a big difference between 12 and 13 cm 😉

I went to a brown with magnetic copper sparkles. The magnet oriented the sparkles so that one direction it looks brown-copper, another direction orange-copper, and another direction yellowish-green. The magnet also put thin bright copper waves across each nail.

So far only home usage. They are not as hard to walk on as I thought. Outdoor may be a new learning experience. I’m now looking at other stilettos and heels I want to buy. Especially as life has changed for me recently and I can now live life to my fullest, no more caring duties. I’m looking forward to being able to wear heels more regularly, especially when going out.

They certainly look steeper than my 12cm heels - quite a bit steeper in fact. You’ve probably got something as steep as @higherheels Hot Chicks but with absolutely none of the chic or the cachet

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.

Yesterday, I went to my nail salon to get a new mani for Halloween. I got my regular clear/pink gel on my fingers with some nail art on my little pinkies. On my left pinkie I got a black base, with an orange jack-o-lantern . On my right pinkie, orange base with a white ghost on it. A great job again by my manicist. Incidentally, I was wearing a black skort, orange tee with a jack-o-lantern print, orange fleece too. Also, I was wearing black fishnet hose with my orange patent knee boots. This made for some nice compliments from other customers in the salon, including my manicist. Happy Heeling, bluejay