The Red Shoe Diaries, Part 1

Remember these?

YSL Doll

These are the ones that I bought in New York when I couldn't find these:

Manolo Blahnik Dodo

And was ever so torn about. You remember. I did wind up returning the YSLs. They were beautiful shoes, but they just weren't the ones I wanted. I did all this justifying to myself about how useful they would be and how comfortable they were, but every time I looked at them the first thing I remembered was that they were not the red Manolos.

("Red Manolos," by the way, is a phrase I'm going to be using a lot. It has, as Sian the English Rose points out, poetry. I'm going to use it to indicate that something has superlative qualities or is the ne plus ultra of its genre, as in, "Oh, my goodness, that delicious strawberry ice cream was the red Manolos!" Along the line of "bee's knees" or "cat's pajamas." I invite you all to join me in this linguistic innovation.)

I first ran into them (the Dodos -- a truly terrible name, but it was easy to remember, which was helpful later) in a magazine (I think it was Harper's Bazaar) several months ago. I cut out the photo -- it's been on my style board for months. The last time I was in Dallas, I actually tried them on in NM and nearly fainted with desire. All my friend Jody had to say, seeing them on my foot, was, "Ooooooooh..." Me, too.

So the YSLs went back, and once I'd done it I really didn't have any regrets, which is a sure sign they didn't belong with me. (And, it turns out, it's a good thing I returned them. But more about that later, she said conspiratorially.) I decided to hold out for the Dodos, and I decided I had to wait until they went on sale. Ted, my shoe guy at the Austin Neiman Marcus, had told me that the spring merch would start to be moved out June 1, and that there would be a pre-sale immediately before. My plan was to wait for the pre-sale and (provided this style went on sale) get Ted to have the shoes drop-shipped from the Dallas store. (They didn't have them in Austin.) That way, I save the shipping costs and Ted (who really is the sweetest guy -- go buy some shoes from him, you'll love him) gets the sale.

I was a little worried about the availability of the shoes, because I was noodling around on the NM site the other day and noticed that they were no longer on there. I know that the whole waiting-for-the-sale game is a risky one, but I stuck to my guns.

At any rate, I was tooling around on the internets looking at shoes this weekend (Because that's what I do. On my resumé, shoe shopping would not go under the "Hobbies" section. Oh, no, my friends, I would list shoe shopping under my "Special Skills."), and I stumbled across these:

(Life Stride Cierra -- click photo for link)

I got a very positive response on the YSLs, everyone loved them, they really are gorgeous shoes, so when I saw these I thought I'd tell folks about 'em, because I think they're very handsome and reminiscent of the YSLs. Also, they cost approximately $520 less. Not a bad thing. As a matter of fact, $520 less is the red Manolos.


Photos: NeimanMarcus.com, Zappos.com