I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: NO MORE FLIP-FLOPS, EVER!!
http://bostonworks.boston.com/news/articles/2006/06/29/are_flip_flops_damaging_your_career/
Walking On Sunshine
Someone commented recently that she was trying to dress up for a board meeting but wound up tripping on her strappy beaded cork wedge sandals.
Were they something like this?
Because if so I have almost the same pair and I am telling you, girl, you just need to wear them once or twice and you’ll be running around as comfortable as can be. I wore mine the other day and walked across a loose gravel parking lot with no problem, went on two pastoral calls and did grocery shopping. My feet weren’t sore a bit at the end of the day. And if this meatball can say that, anyone can say that.
I alternate between sturdy flats and beautiful heels or wedges and I feel so much more pulled together in shoes with some height to them. I didn’t wear heels for about ten years — I thought I was too fat and they would hurt my knees or feet — until my friend Nathan, an actor, director and drag queen, (and quite a big girl himself) took me shopping a few years ago and said, “Girl, get you some HEELS, for God’s sake!” When I tried to demure, he said, “If I can wear them, so can you.”
He was so right. I was descending into frump more and more with each passing year, and it began with the shoes. I still have, and adore, the comfortable Nine West pumps we bought for me that day, and I can’t believe how easy it is to run around in them. But when I first got them I really had to practice a few times before wearing them to work. By now, darlings, they’re like sneakers.
A tip: if you’re not used to high heels, be sure to get something with a rubber sole or have them put on. There’s nothing to put a girl off heels like slipping in the hospital on the way to a visit.
If you want to step out in the new ballet slipper flats fashion, these will do nicely:
These, on the other hand, will not, unless you also think it would enhance your ministerial image to go about sucking on an enormous lollipop:
This flat shoe is just frumpy, my doves. It cannot be redeemed by cute skirts or snappy socks or anything. It is a Frumpy Flat:
These flats should be taken out and shot:
(This one, from the Olive Oyl Coutour Line, particularly offends me as a human being)
But this, amidst the thousands of ugly flats being shown this season, has a bit of retro 80’s fun about it, and actually has a sense of style:
Walk with God, my friends. And when you’re getting out of the car or truck on Sunday mornings in heels and your knee-length skirt, for heaven’s sake be careful not to get into an “I see London, I see France” situation.
Whence Elegance?
Remember when women knew how to walk? Remember Marilyn Monroe and Rosalind Russell and Kate Hepburn and how they moved? Remember Bette Davis? By god, that’s presence. Not ministerial presence, of course, but PRESENCE. You know who has Presence today? Jessye Norman.
Those insolent tarts who walk the red carpet know nothing about it. A couture gown does not presence grant. Neither does daily injections of Botox, Miss Kidman, or starving oneself into a transparent gossamer condition, Miss Zellwegger.
Remember when women wore gloves, and they made putting them on and taking them off into a little Japanese tea ceremony of minute beauty and elegance?
Nowadays I see women shuffling along in FLIP-FLOPS — the dreaded flip-flops that are the enemy of everything elegant — looking and sounding like a paper-slippers-clad nursing home denizens — schluf schluf schluf. They blab away on cell phones and chaw gum at the same time, all while swigging from a Starbucks container. VERY elegant. Every time I see one of these beauties I think of that wonderful line from “Singin’ In The Rain,” plaintively spoken in a flat midwestern voice by a drab little flapper watching the great Lena Lamont on screen:
“She’s so refined. I think I’ll kill myself.”
For lessons in elegance, darlings, see Annette Bening in “Being Julia.”
Charming film, fabulous performance. Elegance, elegance, humor, and a study in the surgically unenhanced middle-aged beauty.
P.S. No one’s feet and ankles look lovely in plain old flip-flops. At LEAST get some with a bit of support and shape to them, for the love of Olivia DeHaviland.
My Little Crazy Keenes
I bought a pair of these tonight, in a gray-purple color:
They make my feet look like crazy little pods, but I got them for a few good reasons:
1. They’re incredibly comfortable but they’re NOT BIG UGLY SNEAKERS.
2. I can pack them for my summer trips and wear them on long walks so I don’t have to pack my BIG UGLY SNEAKERS.
3. They’re waterproof — hey, walks on the beach! Great for your calves! And these have better support than my Tevas.
4. In ten years from now, they’re going to be so out of fashion that just peeping at them in a box in the closet is going to send me into gales of laughter, but in 20 years they’ll be wildly fashionable again.
5. For no good reason I’ve just been lusting after them for two years. When I saw SisterBang’s new pair I knew I was going to give in and get some of my own.
6. They’re darned cute and they’re not BIG UGLY SNEAKERS or frumpy, hideous flat canvass summer shoes.
P.S. They’re not for ministry. They’re for Regular Person Life.
Shoe Recommendations, Again
I seem to be pimping Easy Spirit shoes today, so here, for the woman who wants a summer shoe to wear for weddings:
Stay away from anything too loafer-like and with buckles. Most of these are cut well and look fine and sturdy (I like the Await style) and I bet they’re comfy. I’m not mad about the shiny leather of the pumps but hey, at least they’re leather and your feet won’t sweat.
These are called Finales by Easy Spirit and they’re a bit pricey at $75, but you’d have them for millions of years and they’re frumpy in a good way, like you’re trying intentionally not to upstage the bride:
I rather loathe Mary Janes — just because they’re so often the choice for clergy without a smidgen of glamorous imagination, and they only look cute if you get the real chunky heeled ones and wear them with a flippy skirt and great sweater and textured hose and a great big dose of irony — but these are acceptably classic for a Mary Jane-type shoe.