The Twenty-Dollar Giggle

There are things in a person's closet that are investments. The sorts of things you know will last for years, that you will wear many times over, that form the backbone of your wardrobe and personal style. A great winter coat, for example. The perfect pair of boots. The go-to cocktail dress that always makes you feel gorgeous & glamorous. A classic handbag that smartens up everything you wear with it. These are the sorts of things everyone needs, and they are also the items you should spend a little extra money on. It makes sense, if you're going to rely on something for the next 10 or 15 years, to get the best version of it you can possibly afford.

On the other hand, there are the giggles. The goofy, whimsical, or totally of-the-moment items that you may wear for one season or with one outfit and that's it. Funny or frivolous things that are just for giggles. Like these:

(Beverly Feldman, boop-boop-a-doop)

I've been seeing them at the Neiman Marcus outlet for a while now and while they always made me smile, I just couldn't justify spending even the outlet price on them. However, this weekend I was poking around and dicovered that evidently the folks at the outlet are tired of looking at them, and they were marked down to 18 bucks and change -- with tax the total was $20.56. Seriously. Well, I think a $20 giggle is not a bad bargain. And believe it or not, I'd actually been looking around casually for something fun & colorful to wear with this little cutie-pie from DVF:


Great little crisp cotton sundress with a nice full skirt that is actually the proper length for a grown-up! I love this dress, especially when the weather in Austin reverts to its usual hot, muggy mid-July self. I only have one other pair of Beverly Feldman shoes:


which are equally, um... eye-catching and, as I recall, which I also bought waaaay on sale. (Although I truly love these boots and wear them with surprising frequency -- they went to Paris with me last winter. Parisian women admired my boots! So there!) Ms. Feldman's shoes are usually pretty over the top; sometimes wonderfully so:
and sometimes not so much:
Ya know, I'm a pretty adept stylist and I just can't think of a single thing... It's like these were made at some Pole Dancers' Quilting Bee. I just don't get it.

I wore my new $20 giggles to a Bastille Day celebration Saturday night (Vive la France!) and they seemed appropriate somehow. I can't help but feel people should call me Fifi when I'm wearing them, n'est ce pas?

Photos: Style Spy, BeverlyFeldmanShoes.com