mlroseplant

I had occasion to go the bank yesterday. We got off work a little bit early, and I decided I needed to move some money around. This time, I made sure I was cleaned up, looking halfway presentable, and wearing heels. I chose burgundy colored pants to go with burgundy Carressa mary janes. I considered wearing some super stiletto-y Steve Madden pumps, but thought the mary janes were a better choice for what I was trying to accomplish, which was to talk to the bank lady about heels. I entered the bank with my paperwork in hand, looked around for an open teller (and the high heeled bank lady), and soon a teller called me across the lobby to her counter. No sign of the bank lady. Figures. I went on about my business with the teller, and the next thing I knew, there was this person standing right next to me, which just goes to show that you can't always be situationally aware unless you make a constant effort to be. The person who sneaked up on me was the bank lady, and she said, "I don't mean to bother you, but your shoes are incredibly cute. I heard someone walking across the lobby who sounded just like me, and I had to see who it was. I'm glad it wasn't just somebody wearing cowboy boots, and WHERE DID YOU GET THOSE SHOES?" Whoa! That was not at all how I figured this was going to go down. You would think that after what, 12 or 13 years of this that I'd be perfectly comfortable with this sort of encounter. I did manage to get out my line that it was indeed heartwarming to see someone out there who still wears heels besides me. Mind you, this is all right up there at the counter in front of the teller who was helping me. So as it turns out, bank lady wears heels every single day and loves wearing them, and the rest of the people at the bank think she's crazy. I think she was glad to have someone else tell her coworkers that heels don't necessarily have to hurt at all. I don't think we gained much traction on that assertion. After the transaction was over, I went over to the bank lady's desk (I still don't know her name), and we talked about shoes for another five minutes or so. Her boots on this day were nothing very special, they were plain black with slim (not stiletto) 4 inch heels. She said she had most of her extensive shoe collection already packed away for the move. Move? Now for the bad news. This interaction will never happen again. Evidently, today (Wednesday) is her last day at the bank. I asked her where she was going to, and she said that her husband had gotten a new job in a town about 75 miles away, and that they would be moving there. I know the town reasonably well, and we talked about her impending move. I wished her well and departed. It's not really a big deal, but that's exactly my luck. I'm going to be the only one again. Sigh. At least you won't have to read any more stories about the bank lady, and I know for sure she doesn't think I'm a creep for liking her shoes.

It is true that society in general has grown way more casual, especially since our world health issue happened back in 2020. I get the kind of static you're talking about myself, because I won't wear heels unless I'm at least slightly presentable, which to most people these days is "dressed up." It's even affected my wife. She has many, many cute dresses and outfits, but rarely wears any of them these days. She is a regular vendor at a couple of different farmer's markets, and her signature was to dress up. All of the other vendors were looking like they were about to do automotive engine repair, and she'd be in this cute little dress every week. Those days are over. Now it's leggings and Crocs. What can I say?

I have come to the conclusion that certain brands, or at least certain styles within those brands are suspect just because they are that brand. You probably know that I am not a big fan of Michael Kors or Vera Wang, both well respected mid-priced shoe manufacturers. And by mid-priced, I mean like 300 bucks retail. Not cheap, but not Gucci. Neither of those companies seem to be able to make a shoe which will actually last when worn regularly. I have finally broken myself of thinking I'll give them one more try. I hate to admit it, but I've eventually come to the same conclusion about BCBGeneration/BCBGirls. They eventually crap out under what to me is normal use. This is why I bought 6 pairs of my favorite Bonny sandals. I'm on Number 4, and none have lasted the way I think they ought to. And now to address the part I bolded in the quote. I'm sure I've told this story before, but there is a certain model of True Religion wooden mules that I like, and I've owned 5 pairs of them over the years. The first pair I bought probably 10 years ago, and I wound up selling or donating them because a) they were too high for me at the time, and b) they were orange, and I only wore black back then. Could not possibly imagine myself wearing orange high heels in public. The second pair I bought, years later, was dark brown, and they were waaaaay better after a few years of practice. I loved them a lot. The problem was, within less than 10 miles, I lost a top lift (or heel tip) somewhere along the way, and by the time I noticed it, I had ground down about 3/4 of an inch off the bare wood/composite material. Not really fixable. In the trash they went. The third pair, which was in black, lost its top lift in about the same number of miles, only this time I noticed pretty much right away. I slipped off the shoes and walked barefoot the rest of the way home. Had the sandals reheeled, and they have turned out to be my most durable shoes to date, having racked up nearly 250 miles so far with no problems. Then I had a fourth pair where I lost the OEM top lift within a few miles, but knew to look for it. With the fifth pair, I told the cobbler, "I know these top lifts look brand new. . .because they are, but replace them anyhow." Lesson learned on what amounts to the third time. A very long-winded story to say that if you love the boots, I would take them somewhere and see if there is anything to be done with them before putting a bunch of miles on them worrying that they're going to fall apart at any minute. That kind of ruins the whole experience, doesn't it?

I'm not a conspiracy guy, but among all of us, we've had similar things happen to us many times. A heel came loose, or a shank broke, or some other catastrophic failure. So let me ask you this: In any case, when you were hobbling around, trying not to look like an idiot, would you have been able to take your shoe, especially while still wearing it, and rip the entire sole off with your bare hand, such that it was a separate piece, suitable for throwing?

She has done a number of things that I like in the past decade, but unfortunately none of them are musical. She was all right when she was sort of country, but now she ain't no differ'nt than any other pop schmo with 6 songwriters on every song, and 10 producers. I like the fact that she grabbed her own material back from her record label in a sneaky yet bold way.

Iowa is kind of famous for its winters, but the reality is that it's either mud or ice. Yeah, we'll get some snow in there sometimes, but for the farmer and the construction worker, there are only two conditions: Mud or ice.

Some of you will be happy to learn that I have increased the size of my boot collection by 100% in 2024. I now have four pairs of knee boots, two high heel, one low heel, and one flat. I had all of those by the end of last winter, but I was down to one pair of ankle boots. I now have four pairs of ankle boots, all high heeled. However, I am still looking for another pair of tall, slim heeled (not stiletto) boots, because the pair I bought that fits that description has already started disintegrating, and may be unwearable already, from an aesthetic standpoint. Specifically, I would like to find some Simply Vera Wang ankle boots, model Velma or Svellie in size 9. My Svellies I just got are just as good as I remember, but the color layer on the outside of the faux leather boots has started peeling off in sheets already. How disappointing. Basically, I want something similar looking. I have found a couple of pairs, but they want way too much money for something that is over 10 years old, and may have the same problem as the pair I've already got.

It kind of looks like the soles of those boots are completely smooth, as well, which is not great for mud. Having said that, that there is a fine line (for me anyway) between having a completely smooth sole and way too much tread pattern when it comes to mud. The Steve Madden boots I bought have an almost logger boot tread pattern on them. What a complete mess in the mud! I once bought a pair of actual logging boots for my job. I will never do so again. They are extremely good at collecting mud, making your boots much heavier than they need to be, and then they nicely distribute this mud everyplace where it wasn't before.

Ever since I got my scooter, I decided I needed some sh*tkicker motorcycle boots. I got these Steve Madden Laurie boots last summer that fit the bill. In fact, perhaps they fit the bill a little too much. I bought these on Poshmark for $25, and you know how sometimes things look different when you see them in person. It's my own fault, of course, for failing to notice that these boots sport HUGE, HONKING TWO INCH THICK HEELS! I mean, I do have some chunky heels in my collection, but these take the cake by quite a bit. I think the heels on my second chunkiest pair are a mere 1 1/4" wide. I did not wear these boots on my motorbike trip last summer because I received them only one week before the trip, and as y'all know, that would be just plain foolishness to wear them on a long trip, unvetted. I did not really get around to vetting them until a few days ago. Specs on the boots are: 4 3/8 inch heel height, 2 inch heel width, 3/4 inch platform. Here's where the math lies a bit: The math says that the boots are 3 5/8" effective heel height. The first time I wore them, I thought, "These feel quite a bit higher than 3 5/8. More like 4." Upon closer investigation, they are more like 4 inches because of the way the footbed is designed. At the front, the footbed is pretty much even with the top of the platform. In other words, there is no hidden platform at all. At the back, the inner footbed is substantially higher than the top of the heel. Almost like there's a little mini lift in an already high heeled shoe. Weird. Mystery solved. They really are 4 inch heels. Before last week, I had worn them a couple of times to ride, but hadn't really done any substantial walking in them. I found them to be rather on the tight side, so I thought that I needed to actually do some walking in them, just so I know what I have. What I found was rather surprising. I took a route such that if something was badly wrong, I could cut the walk short without having to struggle too much. What actually happened was that I wound up walking a full 2.2 miles in full comfort. It seems the boots had already stretched out quite a little bit withing the 2 miles. The other surprising thing is that they don't feel all that clunky when walking, as many shoes with giant heels do. They are almost graceful. Almost. I figured I'd look and feel like Frankenstein's monster, but I did not. Hopefully, they hold together for a while. I have found that tough-looking, clunky shoes often fall apart quickly. 'Cause you know that super big heel is nothing but a thin plastic shell. We'll see.

Yeah, the flexing is somewhat normal, but it's not right. That's what the gray sandals pictured above do to some degree, and you're right, it's not limited to stilettos. It also has nothing to do with the heel--it's the shank. The part underneath the arch of your foot is what's doing the flexing. I'm not saying that heels do not occasionally come loose from their moorings, but it's rarely a problem. The first time I ran into this situation, @HappyinHeels was actually at my house. I said, "Here! Take a look at this expensive designer shoe, and tell me what you think." He took the heel in his hand, and it wiggled ever-so-slightly, but it was still firmly attached to the sole. Between the two of us, we never really figured out what was wrong, and figured it was ok. And it was. For a while. Until one day, the whole heel caved in while I was walking. Keep in mind, these were thick block heels. Being as they were unusable anyway, I tore open the footbed to discover that the strip of metal contained therein had snapped clean in two, allowing the heel to flex almost infinitely. Mystery solved. Since then, I've had this happen to me several times, and none of the shoes in failure mode were stilettos. I know it's frustrating to have a pair of expensive shoes turn out to be crap quality, that's happened to me a number of times also. The shoes I was referring to originally were Vera Wang, Lavender series, something which probably retailed originally for around 300 bucks. I didn't pay anywhere near that, but you get the idea. And they were crap, both pairs that I owned. They were beautiful, but very poorly made as far as durability. To my original point: Don't be afraid of stilettos just because of the shape of the heel. The heel itself is rarely what fails on these things.

Here is an example of what I mean by "near stiletto" heels. These Michael Kors sandals, which I wore to church yesterday, feature heels which are 7/16", or 11 mm, thick. That is not really a stiletto, but the heels are so tall that they perhaps give the illusion of being stiletto. Were they only three inch heels, there would be no question that they are merely "slim" heels. Of course, your mileage may vary. Some people would put this in the stiletto category even at 11 mm. I'm still going with 10 as the maximum. The other interesting thing is that despite their thickness, I would put any of my Steve Madden stilettos ahead of this pair as far as sturdiness, even with much thinner heels. As far as I'm concerned, thicker does not automatically mean sturdier, it really has more to do with the rigidity of the shank.

Got a couple of pictures this week. One is the church OOTW, featuring a gray color palette, which may be an oxymoron. The second is Casual Saturday, when I decided to wear my new boots, which are rather on the chunky side.

Stiletto heels are fragile in the sense that they are very easy to damage from stepping down in some sort of gap in the walking surface. I have never found that the heels themselves are the weak link--it's the shank. For those of you who don't know, the shank is a strip of stiffening material, typically metal, that runs below your foot between the inner and outer soles, and connects the heel with the front of the shoe. I have broken exactly one heel in my life, but I've broken several shanks. Once the shank breaks, it feels like the heel is broken because it just caves in, even though the heel itself is still securely attached. I also have a couple of pairs in that 10 to 12 mm "near stiletto" range, but ironically, they are some of the least stable feeling shoes I own, and it has to do with the shank, not the heel. I'm not making a plug, but I have over a dozen pair of Steve Madden stilettos in various styles, and I've never had pair of Maddens feel anything but rock solid when walking. The heels on these shoes range from about 10 mm all the way down to <7 mm. If you didn't see what you were wearing, you'd never know that you were walking on heels that thin. To be fair, I also weigh 60 kg. That may have something to do with it.

Perhaps that is an idea for another topic someday, though it's not "high" heels--one's preference for work boots. I know my own preference has changed over the years, and I've settled on something rather unusual in my trade. I would start the thread right now, but I think some pictures would be rather helpful, which I'll have to take later.

Interestingly, we had an extensive (some might say exhausting) discussion about what is and what is not a "stiletto" heel. I can say with a certain amount of confidence that no-one here at HHP would call that particular example a stiletto. It is clearly too broad. I personally would call it a "slim" heel. There is some disagreement, but the maximum width of a heel can be no more than somewhere in that 3/8" or 10mm range to be a stiletto. I say "somewhere" because it's not always clear, due to other factors, such as taper and total height. My skinniest stilettos are barely more than 1/4" or 6.5 mm thin, and I have many more than come in at 8 mm. 10 mm seems to be numerous in my collection as well. There seems to be little correlation between heel width and walkability, which is counterintuitive, but it's what I've found in practice. The main advantage to "slim" heels, like the one you submitted, is that the heel tips are going to last you five times as long compared to stiletto tips. This is the reason I don't walk in stilettos anymore. Also, it's far less critical to look out for cracks and holes in the sidewalk. If you're just wearing them to the office or to church or the supermarket, fine. Putting 30-40 miles a month on them is not something I care to do.

HiH, that's not what I really had in mind when I used the phrase, "one of us." Number One, I'm not a member of the LGTB community, as I do not meet the technical requirements, and Number Two, though your postulation is not beyond the realm of possibility, it seems almost certain that the woman in question is cisgender. What I did mean by "one of us" is someone who actually enjoys wearing heels for their own sake. I do not believe I have ever met such a woman before, at least not to my knowledge.

I, like CAT, do not have the opportunity to wear heels at work, as it would not be advisable or even desirable. However, just for the record, there was a time when I thought I would never wear stilettos, either. I'm going to make a prediction that it will only be a matter of time before you're comfortable with stilettos.

That was/is exactly my plan, should the opportunity ever arise. Obviously, this plan does not work very well if I'm wearing work boots. But who knows? I've been around for 12+ years.* She may already know who I am. Many of the bank tellers there do. *As a heel wearer. I hate to think about how long I've actually lived in this town. More than quadruple that number.

I have definitely created a two-tiered system with my shoes. First class is for walking, and second class is for showing. Actually, that should probably be the other way around, as I wouldn't wear most of my walking shoes in any but the most casual situations. What this mean is that 80% of my collection is worn very little, and I should probably be more ruthless about getting rid of pairs I haven't worn for a couple of years. Most of the time, but not all, the trouble is caused by a combination of leather upper with a man made lining. That combination does not seem to age well when exposed to oxygen. My all leather shoes do not seem to have this problem, and my plastic shoes seem to have it less. Sandals seem to suffer worse than fully enclosed shoes. Maybe this is a false perception on my part, as once this problem starts happening on a sandal, you might as well throw that pair away, because the flaking is usually quite visible as they're being worn, whereas with a fully enclosed shoe, such as a pump, you can't really tell until the shoes are removed. The latest example of this was when I wore my red Steve Madden open toed mules to church a few weeks ago, and by the time I came home, I noticed I had red flakes all over my toes. Not a good look, and there is nothing to be done about it. They're just gone. I used to have a rule that if I couldn't walk at least two miles in reasonable comfort, I didn't keep the shoes. Nowadays, I do not maintain any such hard and fast rule. I think that I probably could walk two miles in a lot of my "dress" shoes, but I don't want to for a number of reasons.

Thank you for the suggestion. I do have a couple of situations where epoxy would be a good solution. Most of my problems have either to do with sandal straps breaking, which a person might as well forget about repairing, or the deterioration of the inner lining of the shoe/sandal. Normally, it's just an irritant, but sometimes it gets to the point where one can begin to notice it from the outside, and that's a bridge I cannot bear to cross.

I hate to keep coming back to the same subject over and over again, but I've had occasion to visit my bank yet again, this time for an unfortunate event (which actually turned out to be nothing), and yet again my bank lady was in real, honest-to-God heels. The difference this time was that she was the person who assisted me directly, and was not sitting behind a desk or standing behind a counter. It seems that every time I have occasion to physically go to the bank, I am either in the middle of, or preparing to do some grubby project. Friday was no exception, and I was in work boots rather than heels. I was so very tempted to mention footwear but I resisted that temptation because of the creepiness factor. Now that I've had a chance to interact and observe her up close, I am even more curious about her specific motivation to wear heels a lot of the time. This is because she is objectively the opposite of the type of person I would expect to wear heels by choice. I can tell you that she is married, or at least wears a ring. She appears to be about 35 years old, and is in reasonably good physical shape for an American that age these days. She wears little or no makeup. Her nails are unpolished, but well taken care of. She seems to dress very conservatively. I've never seen her in anything but tailored pants. What I'm getting at is that there is absolutely no reason for her to wear heels, and yet she does. Maybe she is one of us. I am not going to make it one of my life goals or anything, but I feel like if the correct opportunity presents itself, I ought to ask.

2024 has been a hard year on my shoes. I went through my collection a couple of days ago, and found that I've had to throw out 11 pairs of shoes this year. About half of these simply grenaded on me, and the other half simply deteriorated to the point where I couldn't wear them anymore. I have many more shoes which leave pieces of colored lining material all over my feet every time I wear them, but are otherwise sound. I have half a dozen which need some sort of repair or other. It has gotten to the point where these phenomena happen more and more with shoes I've just purchased, and have worn only once or twice, even though it's obvious they have never been worn before. I'm afraid that I'm going to have to do something different in the coming years if this trend continues.

I have never actually flown in heels before. Nowadays I have grown to dislike the whole experience, such that I'm not sure it would improve my attitude even with heels!

With colors like this, I would say it is impossible to get an accurate rendition that is universal. They look different than what they looked like in the sale pictures. I still like them, but they are less purple-y than I expected. To my eye, they look browner than they do purple, especially when put next to my other pumps in that color range. It's about time for another shoe inventory, and things have shifted a lot since the last one. I have quite a few pairs of shoes that I would call some sort of "neutral patent." And yes, I sent the pictures to my friend. So far the only reaction I've gotten is a heart icon, but that means little.

I have two things to report. Number One, I talked with a college friend of mine and told her that I was wearing my giant Prada mules for my morning constitutional on account of the fact that it was raining. I know I shouldn't abuse such expensive shoes in this way, but hey, they keep my feet out of the puddles. I didn't pay anywhere near the grand that this brand normally goes for brand new. For one thing, they're slightly damaged, and that was before I started using them for rain shoes. This particular friend is not in my true inner circle, so she said the usual "I want to see pictures, or it didn't happen." Number Two, the other picture you see here is my church OOTW. I got my new pants to go with my new shoes. This is one of the few times, maybe the ONLY time I've ever worn the same pair of shoes to church two weeks in a row. To refresh present recollection, they are Steve Madden Daisie pumps in mauve. They're just a tad under 4 1/2", which puts them more in the 11 cm range, but hey, I can walk in them!