Alexa

Yes, it feels good glancing down at your feet and seeing how good they look, it's great catching a glimpse of yourself in a mirror or window as you walk around, and I enjoy wiggling my toes and feeling around inside my shoe, especially if I'm wearing somethig gorgeous. Plus it's good practice for walking around outside. Alexa

Yes, I'd agree with Anna Louise - sometimes it feels like I'm a kind of ambassador for high heels, or especially in my case, platforms. I think the key thing is to wear them with enjoyment and take pleasure in them and that helps to convince other people to try them too. I've even had people who're dedicated to wearing the most unaesthetic flat contraptions say they like my shoes. To which I usually respond that they should get some of their own, even if it's just to play with occasionally. Spread the fun! Alexa

I saw a piece of advice for the dominatrix (should the plural be 'dominatrices'?) online which suggested that once you've got your partner blindfolded you can take your high heels off and wear slippers for the rest of the scene, because he's not going to know! Alexa

Yes, I tend to have about five or six pairs that I wear regularly. Because I'm mostly wearing them against bare skin, I like to give them a chance to air out for a few days between wearings, so I tend to circulate them a bit. But I keep finding old friends in the back of the wardrobe or in the spare bedroom and getting them out and wearing them too. I wouldn't like any of them to feel neglected! Alexa

Now that would be a fun game. Get him to wear a blindfold and see if he can guess what I'm wearing from the sound. Perhaps with rewards and punishments depending on how accurate he is. That'll keep us entertained for an evening or two. Alexa

There are a couple of pairs of boots for which I've got some padded insoles. I have some Demonia platform styles where the insole that they came with disintegrated eventually and left me with a footbed which appeared to be made of lumpy cardboard. This wasn't very comfortable to walk on. Not because the angle of my foot is very steep in these boots, but because it was so lumpy. So I got some of these

http://www.summersoles.com/order_2_suede.htm

They're a bit deaer than some insoles, bu they come in interesting colours and fun animal prints, and as I've said before, I like shoes with interesting patterns and colours inside. Absorbent and comfortable too, so you don't feel sweaty!

Alexa

In both our houses we've got a bit of everything on the floor - tiles, carpet, lino and bare boards. I quite like clattering along the tiled hallway. It sounds very severe and professional somehow! Alexa

There are shoes and boots all over the place at home. In the wardrobe, under the bed, in the spare room, in the hallway and in the car. I must sort them out this summer and cull the weaker members to keep the gene pool strong! Alexa

It's hard to tell. I'd really need a flat heeled control group to compare myself with. Certainly people at work notice my shoes and we have interesting conversations about them sometimes, so they're an icebreaker and get conversations started. Which certainly helps things along. Alexa

I can manage a fairly brisk run in boots with a broad platform heel, but I wouldn't even think about it in stiletto heel pumps! Alexa

I'm a fairly nonedescript 5'7" in bare feet but with platforms on I can of course be much taller. Indeed, I've had comments from friends such as 'I didn't know you were so short' when they've seen me without shoes or boots on. So people must have this impression of me being a six footer! Alexa

High Heel Place has fed my preoccupation with boots and shoes. I now feel a lot less guilty about spending money on them. It doesn't feel so indulgent spending, say, £50 on a cute pair of shoes if I'm in the company of like minded people who spend the equivalent of hundreds! You're all a bad influence on me and are getting me into bad habits! Alexa

When I was younger I used to wonder what would happen if my boots got somehow permanently fastened to my feet. I even remember having one or two dreams about it as a child. Thanks to that incident with the jammed zips I know what it's like, and it just feels damp and clammy. Some evenings when I go round to my boyfriend's house but don't stay the night, I don't bother to take my boots off whilst I'm there, bcause I kmow I'll be home in a few hours and will be having a shower anyway. He certainly doesn't seem to mind me keeping them on! Alexa

I'm glad you enjoyed the concert. Living here in the British Isles you haven't got to mind the rain too much. Most of my clothes are of a style and fabric so it doesn't matter if I get caught out in the rain, luckily. I do however have a number of pairs of shoes and boots which I consider too good to get wet, so I tend not to wear them if there's likely to be a lot of outdoor activity in changeable weather. Alexa p.s. Have you ever tried three pair of socks at once, Heidi? That would be a challenge!

I love the way they're designed to be very close fitting and follow the shape of the ankle and calf, and how you can hardly see any seams. Be sure to let us know how you get on with them when they arrive. Alexa

It certainly changes the way people relate to you. If I'm wearing heels it is as if I'm in a completely different social world. Alexa

Wow. Those are some delicious heels. Here's hoping payday comes soon! Alexa

Yes, it’s warm here inland today, but I see the weather forecast says it’s between 11 and 14 C at the east coast, so you’d need to run about a bit to keep warm in a bathing costume. That’s why I find a top and my cut off skinny jeans or a short skirt more suitable seaside attire in this country. If I know I’m going to be spending a while by the sea I might get myself a cheap pair of plimsolls or something similar to keep my feet safe from broken glass, sharp rocks and shells. Otherwise the ballet flats in my car are pressed into service as beach shoes.

Alexa

Generally speaking, there’s only three pairs of boots I wear socks with in my wardrobe, namely my army boots, a pair of motorbike boots and a pair of New Rock boots with straps all over them, which are a little too large otherwise. Many of the other boots and shoes have never even been worn with hosiery or socks. I tend to buy so they’re a reasonably snug fit on my bare feet, because I find that allowing my feet to move around too much inside shoes is what leads to sore spots and blisters. Since having a car, I’ve very rarely had sore feet, as I don’t have to walk in my fancy shoes more than a few hundred yards at a time. I do enjoy walking though, but that’s what the thick socks and army boots are for. I’ve not really thought of wearing them with other shoes because they probably wouldn’t fit in very well, and I don’t want to stretch my shoes or feel too cramped. I see there’s quite a few people who contribute here who tend to go without socks or hosiery – Karen, Ami, Jen (thehighheelsgirl) and maybe even a few more. So I’m not that unusual!

With the kind of boots I’m likely to be wearing in romantic situations, I’d probably not be wearing socks anyway, so I don’t have to worry about things matching. I give my feet a bit of a pedicure three times a week and clear off the surplus skin with a pumice stone and re-paint my nails, so they’re usually not too bad to look at. As we’ve discussed elsewhere, some men, including my current boyfriend, like the idea of making love with me wearing high heels, so they stay on sometimes when I want to give him a little treat. I am slightly self conscious of my feet smelling, which is something we sockless people have to be careful about, but fortunately my antiperspirant rarely lets me down. I’ve not had any complaints! I rub my big toe against the one next to it and if the skin feels reasonably dry, I know it’ll be OK. If it feels wet I’ll go into another room to undress, just in case. Obviously, if I’m wearing leggings or trousers I have to take my boots or shoes off, but one can step out of a skirt just as easily booted as barefoot.

Alexa

The key issue for me is the angle my foot is at. The best one for me is with my size 7 UK feet at the sort of angle you’d find with a shoe with a 4” heel and a thin sole under the ball of the foot. So that means I’m usually OK with a 5” heel, say, and a 1” platform, and so on upwards. Some of my platform boots hold the foot at a much shallower angle. I have some New Rock boots with a 6” thick sole but my feet are more or less horizontal. I can more or less climb mountains in those, and occasionally have. On the other hand those Demonia XTC platform pumps I mentioned in another thread are quite difficult to walk in, because there isn’t much sideways ankle support and it keeps feeling like I shall twist an ankle. Undeterred, I might try a pair of their XTC style lace up knee boots, because with boots things feel much more stable and I’m less likely to turn an ankle. A look I want to try is really high platform boots and this skirt

http://www.daregothic.co.uk/Skirts%20shop/raven%20days%20of%20fantasy.htm

Roll on payday!

We’ve veered off the subject of driving a bit here, so I hope the moderators won’t complain!

Alexa

No, we wrestled with the zips for a while before giving up. That’s probably how they got so badly jammed. Once again, don’t forget that you’re reading 20 years of high heel wearing anecdotes compressed into a few posts, so it’s not as if I lead an action packed life. Those particular boots were quite narrow at the ankle, so needed to be unzipped all the way down. I wouldn’t have had socks on, because at that point in my life I didn’t own any. I’d left them all behind in a drawer in my bedroom at my parents’ house when I left for college, because I knew I wouldn’t be needing them. I hadn’t worn most of them for a while, because I thought they were quite babyish, and I wanted to be my own woman. Probably a difficult existence for you to imagine Heidi, but I was a sockless student. Quelle horreur! A bit later, with the same boyfriend in fact, I was intending to do some hill walking in the mountains near where we had been to college, and there I was at the ripe old age of 22 buying socks for the first time. I wasn’t even sure how to go about it, or where to look. I got some nice thick woolly ones (I’m sure you’d approve!) from a camping shop to wear with a pair of army surplus boots, which has been my preferred walking attire ever since. Well laced up army boots are difficult for partners to get off too, come to think of it.

Alexa

I don’t want anyone running away with the impression that I’m some kind of bikini babe. If it’s really hot at the seaside I’m much more likely to be wearing a little top and cut off black jeans than a swimming costume as I’m not keen on them. I tend to like wandering around looking for interesting bits of driftwood, abandoned boats and derelict buildings along the cliffs than doing conventional things such as sunbathing or swimming. Most of the time you need to be quite well wrapped up at the British seaside though.

Alexa

Yes, I know what this is like because I have a friend with very small feet who wears children's shoes a good deal. She also has skinny calves so her leg do not fill out the shafts of boots fully either. Fortunately there are a good many online suppliers of small shoes in fashionable styles, so I hope you're not totally deprived. I think there's a thread on here where people mention various suppliers

http://www.hhplace.org/high_heels_wanted/14369-high_heels_but_i_gotta_little_feet.html

Alexa.

Once upon a time in my student days I had some (very cheap) boots in a kind of glossy PVC material with zips on them. On returning with my boyfriend to his flat, he tried to remove them and succeeded in jamming both the zippers. The serrated edges of the zips had got out of alignment and the sliders could not be moved up or down. Fortunately I wasn't wearing tights, so we could get the rest of my clothes off, but I was aware that I hadn't got any other footwear to put on if If I tore them or cut them so I wore my boots all night. My boyfriend's flatmates were surprised to see me going to the bathroom in the morning with a dressing gown and high heeled patent boots on. I think their opinion of him rose quite considerably as a result of that. Whilst my wearing them seemed to enhance my partner's ardour, the boots themselves became distinctly damp and clammy over the course of the night, so it was a relief to get home and get them off. I cut very carefully along the fabric of the zip, so as not to damage the boot itself. I intended to take them to a cobbler and get new zips put in, but as they'd only cost me around £30 to begin with I never got around to it and threw them away at the end of the academic year as it didn't seem worth taking them home. Alexa

Ah, Heidi, you’re very kind. Though as I’ve said, there are a lot of people here who seem far more expert than me. With the benefit of platforms, my feet are only ever at the sort of angle you’d get with a 4” non-platform shoe, I take my shoes off in the office and have a car, so it’s not as if I’m walking around in them all day either. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, there are a lot of ‘how to walk in high heels’ advice pages on the web, videos on Youtube and even classes one can attend, and taken together they'll all teach you more than I could! As regards wearing shoes without any padding, I’ve not really felt the need for padding. If I had ballet boots, or if I was a dancer and did a lot of pointe work I’d probably want padding. But with the weight taken on the ball of my foot, so far I’ve not found myself in pain. Well meaning friends tell me that I’ll suffer in later life, but it hasn’t happened yet. Incidentally, I see Camilla Morton in her book ‘How to walk in high heels’ recommends wearing them on bare feet so your feet can get more traction on the shoe. It’s an irritating book in lots of ways, but it just goes to show I’m not the only one who does this!

Alexa