Aloha, Lovecat,

If you’ve been reading me for awhile, you know I have an unhealthy emotional attachment to certain pairs of shoes.

{ A Shoe Story: Mae and Her Jeffrey Campbell Cage Heels }

{ BUT DOSE SHOES DOH: THOSE JC Cage Heels }

This pair is no exception.

Let me tell you a little story.

Long ago, in a land far away from here, when I saw a pair of beautiful platform cage heels crowning the bronzed and beautiful gams of a gorgeous fashion blogger (Rumi), it was love at first [online] sight. I thought about them for days and weeks. I even might have had a dream or two about them; me traipsing about the streets, getting captured by street style photogs, me romping meadows (don’t ask me where I got this–I’m a city girl) with these stunners and a white lace eyelet dress and a flower crown, my girl friends and I sipping cocktails and staring at our mutual shoe porn envy… Yes, it was most definitely some kind of immediate shoe love.

After six months of vacillating, I bought them at an incredible mark-up at Urban Outfitters, but I honestly didn’t care about the (affordable, but over-priced) expense, because they were insanely comfortable, and distinctly different and edgier than anything I had in my wardrobe at the time (2007 or 2008). But, it was not to be in the Happily Ever After of Shoe Lovers History. After less than a year of wear, the pair of shoes and I went dancing, and, after that ill-fated but glorious night [at least I think it was glorious–I was more than intensely drunk for more than half of it, so I can’t remember much at all other than snippets of memory of me teleporting around the three different clubs we went to], those shoes and I had to part ways. The shoes were broken to the core, and I was left heart broken, bereft of fabulous, unique and edgy shoes–a large gaping need was left in my closet with these splintered shoes as a painful reminder.

More than a year later, enter the Knock Offs. Not only were these a pale glimmer of the original, these were a copy of the ones I had bought, which they themselves were a rip-off of some other, unattainably-priced glittering fashion house original. These new shoes were, in so many ways, just like my first pair… but in so many others, not at all. Taller, less comfortable, decidedly of less quality construction. Yet I wore them and delighted in having them… if only to hail the cherished memories of the original.

I still love them. I don’t care if they’re too tall and the cheap wood of the soles emanates strange smells from time to time. They look almost exactly like their predecessors. In this case, although nothing is exactly the same as the original, it is certainly more–and better–than nothing at all.

Nowadays, though, after reaching the ripe old ThirtySomething age, I wear flats or flat sandals or even slippahs (as we call flip flops here in Hawaii) more often than I will slip on a heel. And, more often than not, that errant pair of heels I don are wedge heels, which, in terms of comfort, are SO much better than my beloved stilettos. All my favorite spiky 4 incher and aboves are boxed in clear boxes, looking down at me lovingly from their perch high up above my clothes in my closet, lying in wait ever-so-patiently for that rare day I choose one for that special Somewhere to Be With Minimal Walking Required. Gathering dust and age, these are relics of a different time… when I would stop at nothing to have and to hold the perfect pair of shoes.

I might be a completely different person now, but I still do adore THAT PAIR.

Oh, what a girl will do for her shoes.

THE END!

(Read the full, silly story HERE: “A Story About a Girl, Her Lipstick and a Journey With THAT Pair of Shoes.”)

{ Are you a shoe lover? What’s the weirdest or most extreme thing you’ve done for shoes? }

Rock on, Lover!
Me ke aloha ~ With love + aloha,
Mae Xx

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