BoyLegs

Typically closed toe and single sole. However, I bought the open toe pumps from Ellie after adjusting for size and they were too tight across the front as well. They don't come in a 15, so there is no place to go on those.

Pleasers and Ellies are basically the same shoes and normally fit the same in my experience. I never have a problem although the shoes are tight fitting. Elite Heels and 6 Inch Heels Forever both do great 6 inch high shoes which might be more generously sized but will cost a lot more. I would just go for a pair half or a whole size bigger.

I have found Pleasers to be more giving than Ellies. All the Ellies I have bought have had too tight a toe box, and it has turned me off to the brand.

We've got that nagging feeling that someone somewhere may be enjoying her- or himself.

Always enjoy seeing white patent pumps.

This place carries sizes up to 13. And in the emai I recieved from them, they say they wilkl start carring size 14 in the spring.

Not cheap at all, but they look like good quality Leather Shoes and Boots.

Take A Look.

http://www.samantashoes.com/

They have some good looking shoes, but "not cheap at all" is something of an understatement. I have never paid over $99 for a pair of shoes (not including boots).

Mickey says that I don't need any more heels as we don't have the space. When I suggest that she get rid of the many pairs of heels that she hasn't worn or can't wear anymore to get more space for mine, her answer is always "NO". Sounds like a woman, doesn't it? All for her and less for me and if she needs space, who do you think she comes to to ask to get more space??? Right you are.

Cheers---

Dawn HH

There is a George Carlin routine whose centerpiece line is, "Move your ****, there's no room for my stuff." I used this in rebuttal to my SO for the first year we lived together. It seems to have got through. Not in reference to shoes, though; if she wanted to get pumps in every possible color, I would be completely in favor.

I like the ballet flats with the string bows and would much rather see those than flat sandals.

The shoes on the cover of the Cars' Greatest Hits album.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:The_Cars-Greatest_Hits.jpg

I totally lust after these. A key part of the dream is being able to wear them in broad daylight with no reprecussions.

Additionally, men of noble birth wore shoes with long pointed toes. At Crecy, the French cut the points off their toes with their swords so they could run faster - they were dismounted - to get to the English. In the late middle ages, many kingdoms had sumptuary laws forbidding commoners from wearing, among other things, shoes with toes longer than a defined length.

My red leather 6 inch courts

Those are sweet shoes and I would like to see more of them.

I also read at one point that open-toe shoes are "too much" (=too sexy) for work. However, I saw some here are work many times, and my wife wears them to work also, though very occasionally only. So, even this part seems to be more open now....

Women's styles cycle in and out of fashion. Most women observe what others are doing and do likewise. So in from about '85 to '98 you normally wouldn't see a woman expose her toes at a business meeting, but lately you may.

In The Woman's Dress for Success, John Molloy had a list of qualifications for Overdressers' Anonymous. Of course one was "I always wear high heels," but another was, "I wear open toed shoes whether or not they are in style." Of course it is kind of funny: Overdressing! Hard to imagine lately.

I don't like to see a lot of foot, but I really like peep toes. However, since they are popular, people are calling sandals and mules "peep toes" anymore.

More than I have room to store, unfortunately. When I find a pair I like, I want them in all the non-boring colors.

Hmmm, seems the whole human race is in danger of wearing flat shoes most of the time !

Does the attention, that women get, equate to that which men draw when showing high heels?

Does feeling self conscious have any benefits?...I can't think of any.

M

The women I have known all have some reluctance to wear heels in public "when nobody else is." They want to fit in and they observe what other people are doing.

A lot depends on the tastes of the target person. Some men love to see strappy sandals; I don't. However, I think the other three pairs of shoes are gorgeous. As to the comments about buying Pleaser, it's great if you're a size 8 and have a lot of options. I don't have those options. I wish I could just order shoes from Nine West or Steve Madden that would fit me. As it is, I own all three pairs of those Pleasers.

Bubba & FF2: Excellent comments from you both, but you're both making the assumption that the person in question became aware of their inclination towards heels before marrying. That raises a different situation:

What if a man has been married for a while and discovers / realizes his interest after he's tied the knot? That's not such a far-fetched idea; I imagine many a man would try to ignore or deny his own feelings.

True: Honesty is still the best policy, but in this case, "coming clean" prior to marriage would not have been an option.

Comments?

Dan

People change. There is this idea out there that you do a whole bunch of due diligence to find the right person, get married and you're done. In reality, either partner may find themselves having to explain, "I went into the marriage agreeing in good faith to live a certain way, but I can't go another ten or twenty years like this and I really need these changes." Happens a lot over the question of whether or not she works outside the home. It's messy, but everything about living with other people is.

In my twenties, I only liked closed shoes. Initially, not even slingbacks. In my late thirties, I started finding open-toe styles that I liked. Lately, my wife has even found some sandals that I think are hot.

The problem is that the secret life gets really really really really old after a while.

Leslie shoes get higher with the larger sizes, so that the 4211/4212 pumps, which are listed as a 4.5" heel, become 5" with a size 14.

This weekend I saw two beautiful pairs of white shoes. Earlier I saw a woman wearning a pair of white mary janes with peep toes and heels that had to be at least 3.5". Then today I saw a woman wearing pants and white pumps with pointed toes. I couldn't tell how high they were but they did have closed backs and stiletto heels.

You did very well for yourself.

While I think that Bronson was writing about technical people, given the surrounding context, I stopped to consider the social engineering point. It is very true that totalitarian movements throughout the 20th century sought to eradicate all forms of personal display. In 1984, Julia starts out in a league of chastity, and one of her acts of rebellion is to wear makeup and high heels.

The negative connotations around "elitist" in the US largely arose during the 1930s. Back in the late 1800s, the Gilded Age, wealth was displayed ostentatiously (to say nothing of the 1630s Cavalier in his flowing clothes). Consider the houses in Newport, RI, or on Prairie Avenue in Chicago. As the income tax rates increased, it was impossible for these families to maintain these houses, and after the Depression set in, such displays of wealth became downright dangerous.

The 30s, the era of the "common man", made the word "elite" have the connotations it has today (it also irreparably changed the meaning of "liberal", but I digress). Fashion adapted by assuming the colorations that were required but offering little hints to the knowing of what is really going on. Tom Wolfe, in Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine, describes the prole tendencies in student fashion at Yale while at the same time the geniunely poor kids literally at the other end of the street (Dixwell Avenue) were striving to take their fashion in the opposite direction.

I find a strong undercurrent of anti-fashion out there. It's related, in a way, to pietism -- the same sentiment that causes a lot of whitewashed churches with no stained glass whatsover in Minnesota. The mentality seems to be, "If you're thinking about appearances, then you're obviously not thinking about what's important."

Po Bronson developed "The Seven Habits of Highly Engineered People" (http://www.digitalsurvivors.com/journal/000682.php), one of which is: "They will try hard to maintain the image that they care very little about their image." I don't find this restricted to the science and engineering people, but would generalize it further to people with a lot of college. It's possible we've had too much education for our own good.

I started a thread comparing the shoe fashions today to other decades. The conversation developed when http://www.hhplace.org/discuss/members/fastfreddy2.html

made this point:

People these days want or expect to live life on a conveyor. They dress for comfort and function, not for (self) style or attraction. Well, not in my understanding of the words..... Calvin Klein under-garments hoisted high above a low waistband hold no attraction for me at all. Loose, grey coloured 'sweat' suits don't look any better when adored with a "designer" or well known brand name emblazened on them. These are clothes that are easy to find, and easy to wear.

It's not that people in Western culture don't have (or can't "make") the time to dress well..... They either can't be bothered (general malaise in our culture) or their energy is concentrated elsewhere. ie. Work.

I have given this some thought. Yes, time is a factor, but it's also the evergreen excuse. "I don't have time" really means "I don't want to."

Meanwhile, I think about all the women I've seen on What Not to Wear (US version), who come on the show and state in some form, "People shouldn't judge me by how I dress." There is a large anti-fashion fashion out there, that says that only shallow people care about how other people dress, or about such matters as elegant shoes. Andrea in The Devil Wears Prada had it, and since the novel was thought to be a roman à clef about Vogue, it is likely Lauren Weisberger herself had it as well.

As a boot fan, I must say that boots with heels are around much much more now in the 2000s than I can ever remember before - and in significantly greater variety too.

Now today, I was in Macy's and I heard the click, click, click of the heels - and there she was with knee high suede 3 1/2 or 4 inch stiletto black boots with a buckle over the instep, very form fitting and very sexy!

Well, you know where my eyes were....................

Therefore I would DISAGREE WITH THE SENTIMENTS OF PASSE.

Boots are on a different track because, prior to about 1970, it was not acceptable for a woman to wear boots for fashion purposes in many situations. My high school, which was a public school, even had a dress code for the teachers in the '60s that proscribed boots in the classroom. Boots will have a place as long as the baby boomers are in charge.

I had always considered the eighties to be a golden age for seeing shoes. A lot of women wore better shoes with higher heels than they have since. For example, I remember being in the arboretum outside of Chicago in the summer of '88 and seeing two women walking around in very high pumps. It was a weekday and they must have been on their lunch hour. I remember the '80s very fondly (not just for the shoes). There were beautiful pumps in a lot of colors, and often the heels were high. Yet choices of styles were limited. You seldom saw ankle-straps, and almost never mary janes. Now butt-ugly shoes are often seen. Many women who would have worn high heels to work twenty years ago feel no cause to dress up today. You see flip-flops and various ugly shoes all the time. Yet, for those women who still care, there are a great variety of styles available. Mary janes have been around all decade, and peep toes came back with a vengeance two years ago. After the puritannical fit of the '90s, colors are back; you can even see some yellow and bright blue now. Last year seemed like the Year of Patent Leather. We also saw a surge of plaform pumps with attractive proportions. The women who make the effort — you know who you are — have a variety of gorgeous shoes to choose from. So what do you think? Are we living in a golden age of shoes?