Funky Shoes and Home Truths

Here's a recent letter from a reader:

I love shoes but I have a terrible time wearing heels because I now have so little padding on the ball of my foot that most heels are a misery after a short while. Inserts help, but I also have very flat feet. All of this is leading up to my search for some cute red heels to wear with long-skinny jeans. I love the kind of clunky round-toe mary janes that are out now. I found some shoes on Zappos:

They’re a little funky looking, but with the padded platform actually pretty comfortable. However, my 17 year old daughter saw me trying them on and blew a gasket. According to her they are ugly and way, way too trendy for a 45-year old woman to wear. Now, I don’t dress like a teenager. Overall, I successfully avoid the “mutton dressed as lamb” syndrome, but I am chafing a little at its application to these shoes. So, I thought I’d ask an expert. Where do you weigh in? Are these shoes ugly or just kind of funky? And what’s the age cut off for wearing funky shoes? Also, other than the obvious brands I’ve tried (and own) like Naturalizer, Born, Sofft, Clarks, etc., any recommendations for those of us with super boney feet?

Thanks,
Melissa

I got a follow-up letter from Melissa the next day saying she had in fact decided against them -- the color wasn't right and maybe they were a bit funkier than she wanted. I loved those red shoes, I'm really sorry they didn't work out because I think they would have been fab with some skinny jeans and a loose top. Very Marni.

As far as Melissa's daughter is concerned... well, I'm sure she's a lovely girl, but I don't know too many 17-years olds from whom I'd take fashion advice. Teenaged girls are not exactly known for their open-mindedness or sound judgment, and the horror of being "different" is uniquely potent in someone that age. As for the age cut-off for wearing funky shoes? Phooey! I refuse to acknowledge any such thing. Because there are age-appropriate funky shoes out there, believe you me -- I've got a closet full of 'em!

I'm opening Melissa's question up to the community here -- anyone have advice on what shoes she should try? I'd love for anyone to send some suggestions for specific shoes, because I'm going to be tearingly busy the next few days and won't have a lot of time for surfing the interwebs. (Clever Style Spy, getting her readers to do her work for her!)

And now, we come to the section where Style Spy drops a few Home Truths on you.

The whole myth about comfy high heels is just that -- a myth. Pretty much no one has very much padding on the balls of her feet, and it does degrade as we age. We are just not built to walk around like that, as any podiatrist will tell you. I can scamper around pretty carefree in a 3" heel for a long little while because I'm used to it, but after a point, no matter what the shoe, I start to feel it. (I find a glass of champagne does wonders for this, but that, of course, is not always practical.) The sad ugly truth is that how "comfortable" a pair of heels is actually equates to just how much discomfort you are willing to bear. This is not to say that I don't have some shoes that are better than others, because I do. But the uncooked meat of the matter is that the difference between a High Heel Gal and a Non-High-Heel Gal is about how she works the Pain vs. Fabulous Equation.

If you see it like this:
you're not a High Heel Gal.

If you see it like this:you are. That's pretty much all there is to it.

So, do these look "comfy"?

(Manolo Blahnik, creator of infinite shoe goodness.)

No, honestly, they do not. Would I care? Oh, HELL, no!!

Up to a point, of course. I don't need to be able to walk far, but I do need to be able to walk. Limping and bleeding by the end of the night is not chic, no matter how fabulous your shoes.

I'm not saying every pair of heels you will ever put on will be like Torquemada going to town on your tootsies. Some heels really aren't too bad -- and it depends on your foot and the construction of the shoes as to how well they match up. But. In shoes, "comfortable" is a sliding scale. I don't have the same standard for "comfort" in a running shoe as I do in a fabulous dressy sandal. As I have told many a shoe-gawker who has asked, "Are they comfortable?" while staring at my feet, when you're talking about a four-inch heel, you're setting a whole different baseline for "comfort" to begin with. It also has to do with any given person's pain threshold (Mine is actually pretty high -- I once had a cracked rib for three weeks before I went to the doctor. I just thought I'd slept funny.) and how long you wear the shoes. Almost anyone can get through a dinner party in a pair of heels, but the back & forth of a day at the office in them might be too much for you.

There are steps that you can take -- a myriad of gel insoles and foot pads and arch supports are available these days, and a lot of them really help. I have a client who takes almost every pair of high heels she buys immediately to the cobbler to have half an inch lopped off the heel and a rubber half-sole attached to the bottom of the shoe. This won't work with every heel, of course, and you need a good shoe guy, but it can work wonders. Some people are even getting collagen or Restylane injections into the balls of their feet to plump up the padding, although I must say this seems a bit extreme. (Not to mention pretty spendy.)

So there are certainly things you can do to improve the situation, but I think it's unlikely that we will ever see the invention of a droolworthy high-heeled shoe you could wear to sightsee in New York City in all day long and end the day feeling your feet had been massaged by angels for eight hours. You cannot turn these

into these

Then again, why on earth would you ever want to?

Photos: Zappos.com, NeimanMarcus.com, NewBalance.com

Hollywood Bores Me

The Emmy Awards were this weekend. To be perfectly honest, I forgot about them, but now that I've looked at the photos I'm not sorry about that. I am just soooooo bored with these people and their fashion choices. Oh, sure, everyone (well, almost everyone) looked "nice." Nice. Nice & neat & tasteful. Of course, the Hollywood definition of "tasteful" means a dress so tight your date should wear protective eyewear in case a seam pops, and often a display of bosom that used to be reserved for Playboy pictorials, but still. Tacky does not equal adventurous.

I've complained before about the dispiritedness and sameness of most Hollywood awards show fashion and how galling it is to me that these women with nearly unlimited means and access continue to choose to wear clothing that often looks like something I could buy off the rack at Dillard's. I'm blaming stylists a lot these days, and if you want a fascinating look at that whole hot Hollywood mess, I recommend this article about Rachel Zoe by Lynn Hirschberg in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine. My favorite part was when Todd Shemarya, Zoe's "brand agent," justifies her upcoming lines of jeans, sunglasses and shoes by saying, “Very few designers ever went to design school." Um, WHAT???? I'm sure all the nice people at Central Saint Martins and F.I.T. will be very surprised to hear that, especially since they provided educations to people like Hussein Chalayan, John Galliano, Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen, Zac Posen, Carolina Herrera, Norma Kamali, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, and many, many others. This is the sort of hubris and ignorance that's set to be running the fashion industry, people. You've been warned.

But you want to see pictures, huh? Okay, here are some:

You know, I've always liked Felicity Huffman (in David Meister here). She's a wonderfully talented actress who has always been viewed with a great deal of respect in the theater community. But Flicka's transformation to Hollywood uberbabe... it kinda skeeves me, frankly. She looks amazing and it's great to see someone so talented who's worked so hard get her due, but still. I worry that something Faustian went on.

Elizabeth Perkins, fresh from putting out the chips & dip. Seriously, if the fabric is stupendous, this dress might be a lot better up close. But from a distance she looks like she's hosting a key party in 1972.

I found this dress, billed as "vintage Chanel," mildly interesting, but they throw the word "vintage" around in Hollywood like a prescription for Xanax, and it basically means "anything not from the previous season." I don't exactly think Coco had a hand in this dress.

Oh, look -- another tasteful, extremely tight strapless black dress. This one is from Bottega Veneta. Yeah, it's nice. You know what was also available from Bottega? This:

Which is beautiful, and not quite such a cure for insomnia.

And here we have another of the ubiquitous fitted satin column gown species:

Mary-Louise Parker in Dolce & Gabbana. She looks nice, but here's the thing: I was taught -- and I maintain -- that if whatever garment you are wearing is so snug that it gets those horizontal creases & puckers, it is TOO TIGHT. I have shooed clients out of many a garment for just that very reason. I know a dress like that has to fit you to a trice to look the way it's supposed to, but that fit has moved beyond a trice. Here's another thing I tell my clients: do not wear satin unless you do not plan on sitting down all night. Because, oh, the lap smiles you're going to have when you stand up, and there won't be any nice magazine editors Photoshopping them out of the pictures for you. Lastly -- if you're going to Dolce & Gabbana for a dress, why on earth would you waste the opportunity on something you could basically find at the Jessica McClintock store? Why not go for this:

Now that you couldn't find at the mall. (Unless it's a very nice mall.)

Heidi Klum in Galliano here. Pretty color, she looks beautiful, love the softness of her hair, cannot bear the affectation of that exposed leg. (And it's a look she goes for a lot.) Granted, the woman has some spectacular gams and I can understand her wanting to show them off. So why not go for this, also from Galliano, but for Dior:

Gorgeous.

Oh, I could go on & on, but frankly, I'm disheartened and bored with these people. It's enough to make me positively dread the Oscars...

Photos: Style.com

Miscellaneous Style Spy Stuff

A reader has written me for information, and I'm throwing it out there for the Collective Fashion Brain to work on. Anyone know what brand/where to find these adorable shoes?

The're awfully cute, I can see why you want to track them down, Melissa! (I also recommend asking over on the Manolo's Blog.)

Secondly -- Style Spy is headed to Dallas this coming weekend, so if any of my Perfumista readers have commissions, they should let me know. This refers mostly to the delicious & too-exclusive-for-its-own-good Aldehyde 44, which can be purchased solely in person at the Le Labo counter in Dallas. Because Le Labo wants you to prove your love.



Lastly, I recently became aware that Victoria's Secret is selling a reversible bra.

(Oh, these ads just make me laugh and laugh... My neck gets sore just watching all that head-tossing.)

Ummmm, what??? Is this an item folks have been clamoring for and I didn't know about it? Because, seriously, this escapes me. Never once in my life have I had the sudden, irrepressible urge to run into the bathroom and change my bra in the middle of the day. You know why? Because my bra is UNDER my clothes. No one can SEE it (we devoutly hope). If your bra typically is so visible that you're treating it like an accessory á la shoes or bracelets -- girlfriend, you need to re-think your fashion strategy. Yes, of course, I like a pretty bra as much as the next double-X chromosome, but why on earth does it need to be reversible? I understand the two-garments-in-one argument, but it's a BRA. And it's all a little too close to the skeevy unshaven college freshman male who just turns his boxers inside-out rather than washing them for me to feel totally comfortable with it. Anyone else?

Photos: Celebrity-Babies.com, Style Spy, VictoriasSecret.com

That Girl

I want to be this woman:

No, not Agyness Deyn specifically, although she's one of my favorite models currently and I'm guessing life in her very fabulous shoes does not exactly suck. No, I mean the Michael Kors woman. You know, this one:

The long, leggy American goddess that he captures so well. Carmen Kass (the model above) personifies this look for me, although for some reason she's not doing Kors' ad campaigns anymore, she's been replaced by some young woman who looks extremely young, underfed, and has the weirdest nose... but I digress.

Kors designs an archetype -- the lean, aggressive, sexy American woman who walks the world with long, confident strides and leaves a trail of defeated men behind her. And who wouldn't love to be that?

I know a lot of people don't think that much of Kors, they say he does the same thing over & over. And no, he's not ground-breaking, typically, or what we Fashionistas like to call "directional," like someone like Miuccia Prada. But good googly-moogly, season after season a parade of models who look like the most possibly perfect version of the strong sexy American woman march down his runways and I find myself yet again saying, "Oh, maaaaaan, I wish I could be her." Let's face it, the odds of me strutting around in a white (white!!) maillot and high heels looking as gorgeous and confident as Aphrodite after a self-help seminar are roughly on a par with those of me sprouting wings and flying, but boy, do I wish I could.

Look at that! How much do you love that -- the cut-down-to-there simplicity of it with a little sparkle, the sharp coat casually over the shoulders (placed there, no doubt, but an adoring and handsome man wearing very good shoes and just the right amount of cologne), the... well, it's just damn sexy, isn't it?

Kors usually runs to classic neutrals -- black, white, lots of tans & khakis, but I am all in a pash about the colors he showed last week.

Pretty, pretty saturated pastels in great sleek shapes. Also I am loving to bits the gold accessories like the thin belts and -- no surprise, the cuffs.

Mmmmmmmmmm, that's yummy.

And so is this:

Oh, that's just fantastic. I love the casual silhouette of the shirtdress made of that sequinned fabric -- easy elegance at its best.

Michael Kors sticks to what he knows, and I mean that in the best possible way. This is not to say that the man is narrow in scope -- if you listen to him talk on "Project Runway," (when IS the next season coming, dammit?!) you can learn a lot about fashion, because Kors really knows his stuff. But he has staked out his acre of the American fashion landscape and there really isn't anyone who does it better than he does.

So how do you get the Kors look? Let's break it down:

*Slim silhouettes -- narrow skirts & pants, tailored blouses, close-to-the-body knits

*Neutral colors: lots of white, black, brown, khaki, camel, black, gray, navy, with judicious pops of color here & there

*Luxe-looking leather accessories, and don't skimp on the rich, shiny hardware

*Shades

*Bronzer

It also helps if you can carry a large bag and look like you just stepped off a private plane arriving from somewhere fabulous & tropical:

I loved this collection, I thought the clothes were gorgeous and everything American sportswear should be. But that's how I usually feel about Michael Kors. What did you think?

Photos: Style.com

Wherein Style Spy Makes Approving Noises and Opens Her Wallet

So today I hied myself to Kohl's to do a little research -- specifically, to check out the new line Vera Wang has done for the low-priced department store, called Simply Vera.

I like Vera Wang's design sensibility quite a bit. When I first heard 7 or 8 years ago that she was going to be showing a regular collection, I was afraid that everything was going to look like a figure skating costume or the ubiquitous strapless a-line wedding dresses she was most famous for. But she's a lot funkier than that. Her color palette is usually subdued, even somber, and she likes to play with shapes and layers. Her clothes aren't typically what you'd call sleek, but they are interesting and look very forgiving and easy to wear, and she obviously has a deep love of wonderful fabric.

(Spring 2006)

(Fall 2006)

She's a fan of the bubble skirt, Vera, and so am I. I wish more women would get over their knee-jerk hatred of the bubble skirt and embrace it. It is a friend to the pear-shaped (camouflage) and reedy (creates curves) alike. Yes, we all had a bad taffeta pouf thing that we wore to prom in the 80's. Does that skirt above look like your hideous electric blue Debbie Gibson homage? No, it does not. So again I say -- get over it!

(Fall 2007)

(Fall 2006. Pay attention to this dress. There will be a quiz later. )

She definitely has a vibe, if you know what I mean. And I like it. And I've been loving the ads I've seen lately for the line, and was ready to check it out. So how was it?

Readers: I went, I saw, I bought.

I bought this skirt:

Which I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes my most-worn black skirt this fall. (And I have a LOT of black skirts. I could wear a different black skirt/white blouse combo for at least a week without repeating.) The fabric is polyester, but it's a nice poly, with a good hand to it, and moves well. And what you can't see in this picture is that while the front of the skirt has all that foompety-foomp going on with those pleats, the back is a completely basic, plain a-line. I like this -- there's no extra fabric in the place where I definitely don't need any extra bulk, but there's still detail & interest in the front.

I also got this:

Simple tissue-weight layering t-shirt that I'm in love with because the modal/silk blend makes it the softest thing besides Shine's tummy I've touched all day today.

(Unbelievably soft. If only I could make sweaters out of that.)

This t-shirt is the perfect sort of layering item that a gal who lives in a warm place like central Texas can use a bunch. It's nice & long, so it's going to stay tucked in, and it flares out at the bottom so it fits over my hips and doesn't bunch up at my waist. The sleeves are really loooooong, cut narrow, and have pretty high armholes, so you could wear this under anything and it's not going to bulk it up. I'm really digging this t-shirt.

I was tempted by this coat

which is also available in black and is really, really cute on. It's unlined and doesn't have a fastener besides the belt -- a fall coat, definitely not a winter one if you live in a cool climate, but a really great piece. The website tells me it's no longer available, but there were plenty in the store.

And this dress is really lovely

(look familiar?)

It's black jersey with a steel-gray silk panel in the front. Very soft, very flowy, very comfy. It could be worn with or without the belt, I think. A note: the website says this is a pull-on dress. It is not -- it has a back zip.

I thought the sizing of the clothes was pretty good -- I think of myself as a fairly medium-sized person and sure enough, the mediums fit me. I got the above skirt in a size 8, although I had to go up a couple of sizes in the pencil skirt that's part of the line, but no surprises there.

Complaints? Well, the color palette wasn't all that I would have loved. It's primarily black, white and and gray, with some muted purple thrown in. There is one blouse in a royal purple that's pretty, but the other purple items are all a very grayed-out version of the color, and those sorts of dusty colors look really awful on me. I would love to have had that t-shirt in a few more colors, and I'm thinking about going back for a white one and possible another black one, but the silver, dusty purple, and oatmeal colors would all be deadly on me. They're showing it in blue on the website, I think I might throw them an order for that. (I'm seriously smitten with that t-shirt, and I'm not one of those people who gets excited about t-shirts.)

Also -- it would be nice to have these things in women's sizes and petites, because the design really is quite nice. (If you are petite, you're going to have to be very careful with this stuff -- most of it is pretty long and has a lot of fabric. You'll run the risk of being overwhelmed by it. I find this a bit ironic, considering how teeny-tiny Ms. Wang is her actual self.) I'm seeing some industry reports online that the sales are actually exceeding expectations, so here's hoping that Kohl's will feel motivated to invest in expanded sizing. (Send 'em a letter! ) And everything is on sale now for 30% off, which will make it move even faster, I suspect.

As for the accessories...

The shoes were pretty good. I was actually kind of taken with these boots

and there are some really cute flats. Shoes are leather, for the most part, and look nice.

The handbags, on the other hand, are not mostly leather.

The store I went to had a framed, handled version of this little clutch and the shape of it was absolutely adorable. Unfortunately, it's made of vinyl, and it looks like vinyl, and the plastic of the frame is thin and a little cheap-looking. This bag was leather,though,

and looked much nicer. It was a great everyday bag with a magnetic closure and the perfect length strap.

There are other accessories in the line -- various scarves & knitted hats & gloves, which are all cute but nothing really noteworthy.

All in all, I think they've done a good job with this stuff. It's not exactly YSL, of course, or Wang's regular line, but for the price point I think you won't be disappointed -- especially while this sale is running. Let me know what you think!

Photos: Style.com, Kohls.com

But He Didn't Stick Around and Make Me Coffee In the Morning

Well, evidently the Want Monster is paying me nighttime visits now, because yesterday I woke up with a Want-On.

You know how sometimes you'll see something and it'll percolate in your brain for a while without your really realizing it and then all of a sudden a vision will pop into your head and you'll be obsessed by it?

No? Really? Is that just me?

At any rate, that's what happened this week. I woke up Tuesday morning and I desperately needed a belt. But not just any belt -- a wiiiiiiiiide belt. More of a corselet, really, something so wide that it becomes a piece of clothing on its own. Here, I believe, is what's been percolating in my squishy little fashion brain:

Dolce & Gabbana. I don't even have to tell you how crazy that coat makes me, do I? It's red, it's leather, it's metallic... Oh, I think I need a moment alone...

More D&G. Leopard-print fur wrapped in tulle. I might faint.

Missoni. Dangit, that thing is art. I am besotted with this belt. I woke up thinking about that belt.

I saw these and loved them at the time (the Fall 2007). The D&G stuff has been everywhere -- every magazine I've gotten for the last few months has had huge double-page spreads featuring these belts, and they've really grown on me. So now I feel like I want one.

"Feel like I want one" might be putting it a bit mildly. "Foaming at the mouth for one" is perhaps a more accurate turn of phrase.

Belts have been very important the last couple of seasons, but I haven't been as belt-focused as some of the editors have told me I should be. I have snagged a couple of great patent-leather (no surprise there) ones that I've gotten a ton of use from, but so far the "statement" belt has yet to grab me. Now, all of a sudden, wham!

I'm blaming the tango classes.

Look at that Missoni belt -- wearing it would feel like having someone's hands wrapped around your ribcage, holding you. This is a feeling I love, and am being reminded of it at this tango class I'm taking, having a man wrap his arm around my waist and glide me around the room. Suddenly, I want to wear a big ol' neon sign that says, "Place hands here!" and that belt would sure do the trick, huh?

So off I went in search of that lovely Missoni creation, and it wasn't hard to find. Popped right up on Net-A-Porter:

(Seriously, it's like a piece of sculpture, isn't it? Amazing...)

and all it'll cost me is $1486.00. (Plus S&H, bien sûr.)

Ummmmmm, okay. Maybe not.

Seriously -- 1500 beans is a helluva lot of money for some leather strips to wrap around your waist. I am seriously considering heading off to the Tandy Leather shop to buy some laces and a grommet puncher and try a little high-fashion D-I-Y. But it's a bargain compared to the D&G, which, near as I can tell, is going for over $3000.

Yep. Three Gs. Three large. Next!

This is a nifty little perfed gold leather Fendi number that I really love, but it's still going to set me back $635.00. Nope.

Miu Miu. Fantastic belt. Can someone tell me why, though, belts are so dingdong expensive??

At this point, it's time for Style Spy to fall back & re-group, and hit the Interwebs on her trusty PowerBook to see what she might actually be able to afford. I share the results with you. (As always, click for links.) (Also, another couple of pricey ones sneaked into this batch, but they were so pretty I had to show them to you. Sorry!)

I think this is gorgeous, and love how soft the leather looks. I think the soft leather is really important in my case because while I do have a rather small waist, the pear-shaped part of me flares out rather dramatically underneath it, so a belt that's too rigid tends to cut into me.

I'm a sucker for woven leather.

Nice & wide, with glossy buckles.

I'm very intrigued by this one -- it only has one skinny belt across the back, so I think it would be very forgiving to wear. On the other hand, I'd probably feel like I could only wear it with a dress because that skinny strap would never, ever stay met up with the waist of whatever skirt or pants I was wearing and I would be fussing with it constantly.

This is definitely on my list. I love the triple straps, the toughness of it, and the fact that it's under 60 bucks. I'm very likely to be ordering this soon. I have a lot of great white blouses that could be really jazzed up by this bad boy.

Again, extremely intrigued but mighty unsure. Perhaps a little too Lingerie Dept. waist cincher, huh? On the other hand, could be very sexy with the right thing.

This is the bargain of the bunch, from Newport News (go ahead -- click to see how cheap it is!) and I am definitely ordering it. It runs the risk of being a little too Mr. Pearl, but I can make it Dita von Teese.

Fabulous black patent -- possibly perfect. From Ferragamo, a company that knows its way around a piece of leather.

More patent. Really love this, and the obi style would make it very adjustable.

Similar belt, in softer leather. Great-looking.

Another killer bargain from Newport News. (Also, how much do I love that blouse? Style Spy does adore a bishop sleeve.)

An important note: I am 5'6", flat-chested, and long-waisted, which means I can get away with a pretty wide belt. If you are petite or short-waisted, this is a much trickier look to pull off, especially if you have a prominent bust. If any of those descriptors hold true for you, scale back on the width. The top of your belt should not be in the same place as the bottom of your bra, unless you are going for the Rennaissance Faire beer wench look, in which case why are you even reading this blog?

So there you go. A buncha belts. If anyone spies any other fabulous ones, I hope you'll let me know. I know I'm supposed to be telling you about the Spring Collections this week and I promise I'm going to, but this belt thing just took over my brain. Fashion is a fickle mistress, you know.



Photos: Style.com, Net-A-Porter.com, NeimanMarcus.com, ShopBop.com, Bluefly.com, Saks.com, yoox.com, Newport-News.com, Armaniexchange.com