[DTM 03] Shoes. Let's get some shoes.
thewickedlady asked me about shoes. I'm so happy.
I fucking love shoes.
I don't really know how this happened, honestly, only that it did. Doc Martens were really outrageous and funky when I was growing up, and I began coveting those intensely when a friend who spent summers in Scotland would come back every year with increasingly amazing pairs. Fancy shoes as a little girl were always great. I wasn't allowed to wear heels until middle school, though I graduated quickly (sort of) from Steve Madden one-inch mules to six-inch Spice Girls nonsense. Shoes were a way to assert personality and independence and teendom. Shoes made me tower, and they were a dare to anyone to match me. I drew all over so many pairs of Chuck Taylors. ajodasso introduced me to Fluevogs when I was a senior in high school, though I didn't purchase a pair until I found some amazing heels on sale about five years later.
To me, I guess, shoes fit on such a weird part of your body. Feet are weird, right? They're less... defining, maybe, than hips or bust or face. (I have small feet for my height, and sky-high arches. My mom had long, narrow feet. It's not that they're not defined, but they're easier for me to imagine in uniform.) I guess I feel like feet are the perfect canvas, and shoes have so many ways to be interesting while still actually being wearable and attractive. (I am at this very moment breaking in a new pair of oxblood Docs, which I have been coveting for years. If we've met, you've probably seen my battered green Docs. I wore my sepia-and-cream brogue heel boots today. You probably have not yet seen my butter-soft navy blue boots, or my rock-solid dancing heels, or my oil-slick saddle shoes. Or my knee-high lace-up steampunk circus mistress boots, which my friends bought me during the darkest time in my life.)
This will be the 85th entry on my shoes are my anti-drug tag.
To me, shoes get their character from where they've been. They're interesting and attractive, but they have a story behind them in a way that doesn't quite attach in the same way for clothes. I have a pair of red heels that I wore when I carried my mother's coffin; they've got graveyard dirt on them, and I've run a mile in them too. I hiked Cinque Terre and wandered Rome, Madrid and Jerusalem in a pair of Danskos I wore to shreds. I saved for years to get my first pair of steel-toed boots; I finally bought them in Seattle while we were there for my sister's wedding. I see shoes as investments -- not quite go big or go home, but they're much more permanent, much more defining for me. Shoes get iconic. They pick up dirt. They wear down. They show where they've been. They last; they're a testament to wear and to love.
Shoes stick around. And that's why I love them, I think.
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