Singing the Plastic Shoe Blues

[mlroseplant]

Although I have not been keeping up on the "New Shoes/New Sandals" thread, I just got a new pair of Steve Madden "Barbb" sandals last week. I think they were made in three colors, and I have all three--black, bone/ivory, and now red. These red mules were I guess what you might call New Old Stock, as they had obviously never been worn. I did the unthinkable, inadvisable action of wearing them out untried. In fact, I never even put the things on my feet for the first time until about 20 minutes before I had to walk out the door to go to church. However, having two other pair of the identical model, and being very familiar with what they are, I took the chance. Besides, I wanted to get all the mileage out of my newly purhased red jeans that I could, and it would seem a shame to wear black shoes.

Everything went just fine, and I got to the point where I forgot I was wearing them, that is until it came time to load out my equipment. Carrying heavy objects while walking down a slight incline always reminds you that you're wearing high heels, I don't care who you are. Anyway, I got home, ran a couple of errands, so I did not take my shoes off right away. By the time I did, I was somewhat disappointed to find the following situation, pictured below. Disappointed, but not entirely surprised. As you may have guessed, like so many shoes in this price range, the uppers are actually leather, but the linings are not, and are therefore subject to the dreaded polyurethane degradation sitting right there on the shelf doing nothing.

Oddly enough, the black pair I have shows no signs of the same deterioration, and they've got to be about the same age, plus they've been worn really quite a bit over the last 10 years. It's not like I have to get rid of the shoes, but it is somewhat inconvenient to have one's feet covered in little bits of plastic at the end of the heeling day.

[Jkrenzer]

It's annoying. I have many pair of Pleasers do the same recently.  Fortunately it's internal only so I do continue to wear them. 

The mules looked great externally, so there's that.

[mlroseplant]

The way I first noticed something was amiss was that I looked down when I got to church and noticed that there was a small white spot right in front of my toes, almost where the shoe meets the ground, and I thought, "I haven't even worn these shoes for 20 minutes and I've already managed to trip on something and take a small chunk out of the leather!" Turns out that wasn't the case, that bit of the shoes are not leather either, and it's just coming apart. However, red Sharpie matches the shade perfectly and camouflages the damage quite nicely.

[Aly]

That lining can be repaired with a judicious application of moleskin...

[Jkrenzer]

That sounds like a difficult job

[mlroseplant]

Yes, that does not sound like something I'm going to undertake. If these were actually fine quality shoes and worth preserving ad infinitum, this peeling business wouldn't be happening in the first place.