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New Shoes

I bought new shoes on Saturday and ordinarily this wouldn't be enough of an event on which to hang a post, but they were a very different type of shoe for me, and it got me thinking. I used to be more of a shoe whore--but never having much money they had to be both extraordinary and cheap. I've always been more of a flats kind of person, but I had a pair of suede Mary Jane's with 2 inch heels that got me through much of college. Most of my shoes tend to be Mary Janes because I have a narrow foot and tend to slip out of shoes if there isn't something to hold on to my foot, laces, straps, etc. I can't wear clogs at all because I spend the day holding onto my shoe with my toes. I've also traditionally disliked thick soled shoes, even when they were better for my foot--say when I was doing visual merchandising. I bought a pair of Doc's but couldn't wear them on ladders because I felt, or rather couldn't feel the step beneath me. So about a month ago I tried on a pair of pumps on a platform. Now, I've generally been against platform shoes--rather like being against open toed pumps. I've often thought of putting together a booklet of my own style rules--if it worked for those b*!#*s, Trinny and Susannah over at the original What Not to Wear it could do wonders for me. People often stop me on the street to comment on my style. I don't believe in a lot of fashion rules, and believe any rule can be broken in the right circumstance, but there are certain places to start.
Anyway, being on these shoes was like being on Japanese wooden shoes. You could rock on them and they made a cloppy noise when you walked (like Sadako). I also felt like I might fall off of them at any moment. They were very "not me." But I went home and thought about them for a month, and when a coupon came in the mail on Saturday for DSW, and I had planned to be in the neighborhood anyway, I decided to look for them again. I didn't find them, but I found another pair that I had also looked at. They are more of a platform wedge, but also shiny and black, a basic pump on a strange base. Because of the platform they are barely heels at all. They also have a slim ankle-strap making them more like my beloved Mary Janes and helping to keep them on. They are really barely platforms. No self-respecting harajuku girl or Goth Lolita would think of them as such. But compared to my other shoes they are definitely ankle-strap, platform wedges. They were very well received at work which has a few women who spend their days in stilettos and other "difficult" shoes.

Now here is what I'm wondering. When/how did my taste change? Is it merely because the platform wedge has come back so much in style that it has insinuated itself into my brain--that all things can become accepted simply by repetition? Is it something that is changing in me? A slight adventurousness as I push my new disciplines? A hearkening after youth? I can't quite decide.

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