my brown shoe ish

[supercheesegirl]

so i've been looking for a pair of brown shoes. but i am very particular about shoes, especially if i'm going to have to pay like $40 for a decent pair, so i haven't been able to find any that are appropriate. here's what i'm looking for:

--first of all, they must have either an ankle strap or an enclosed heel. i have high arches, and those cloggy shoes that put all the shoe weight on the arch just don't work for me. they send shooting pains up my leg when i walk, like, a block, let alone any normal distance.
--pain of any sort is unacceptable--toe-pinching and ankle blistering must not occur.
--they must be closed-toe shoes. i want them to be appropriate in winter.
--they must be brown. chocolate brown, not camel or caramel or tan or beige.
--i do not want lace-up shoes. i have sneakers, i have boots, and i don't need more of those.
--i don't want old lady shoes, secretarial boring office pumps, or preppy shoes that you'd wear with a sweater tied around your shoulders.
--i want them to be funky and fun, with a good clunky heel but not *too much* of a clunky heel.
--the shoes must look equally good with my brown skirt, with jeans, and with nice khakis.
--it would exceed my expectations in a wonderful way were the shoes to have a sort of flower pattern on them or something.

so okay, what we have arrived at is this: a pair of chocolate brown mary jane style shoes with a rather clunky thick sole but not too clunky, with the all-important closed heel. i'm guessing that any woman reading this entry has a fairly specific mental picture of the shoes i'm looking for. shoe stores used to have all kinds of varieties of this sort of shoe, but now most of the shoes they have are those cloggy things, with no back on them. consequently, shoe shopping is torturous, because i'll see like 800 pairs of shoes that would be perfect were there a heel strap, and like 800 pairs of shoes that would be perfect were they not black. jorn has seen me walk through a store and point to like every other pair of shoes and say, i want those in brown, i want those in brown, i want those in brown. because apparently we women like our black mary jane shoes to have an enclosed back, but we like our brown shoes to not have that. whatever, fashion industry.

i know that skechers has a rather cute pair that fits the bill, and so does doc marten, but the docs are obviously way too expensive and i've tried the skechers and they pinch my toes (only on the left foot--did i mention that one's slightly larger than the right?) and also chafe my ankles. born also has a pair that are flat (not clunky) but with a supercute flower design, but they're also way too expensive, plus the enclosed heel is not really enclosed, although it appears that way at first--i walked right out of them when i tried them on.

the above-cited three pairs are the *only* ones that really fit my criteria. today i also tried on a pair of dressier nine west shoes (dressy enough that they couldn't be worn with jeans really) but they only had them in an 8, which was too small for my left foot. payless shoe source has *nothing*. i haven't tried rack room shoes b/c they're usually more expensive. ross dress-for-less had nothing. tj maxx had the above-mentioned nine west shoes and nothing else. walmart and target have nothing, of course. grr grr.

Comments

[poetsnake.livejournal.com]

do you have a *wild pair* near you? (they might be a northeast only chain...) they are always good for fun, clunky, non-cloggish shoes... and, they let you take two shoes in two different sizes if you have differently sized feet... don't know what sort of brown stock they have, though -- i am a black-shoe-only sort of person...

[supercheesegirl.livejournal.com]

i've never heard of that store before... and i used to live outside of philly, too. i know we don't have one down here, though. is there one up in your area? i'm doing a selinsgrove visit in a couple weeks...

[poetsnake.livejournal.com]

hmmm... i know there's not one in the selinsgrove mall... come to think of it, the only places i've seen them are in kentucky and new jersey... but you'd think they'd be somewhere in between, too...