I like nice things. Who doesn’t? I covet often, and with a passion often reserved for those we label obsessive.
However, more often than not, I am a bargain hunter. Not to say I sacrifice quality for price, I just like to stalk my designer bag until I can nab it on sale. The more extreme the sale, the better.
That being said, a couple weeks ago, I opened the door to a portal I never thought I would. I bought my first pair of extravagant (and regularly-priced!) designer shoes. A pair of black, patent leather Valentino peep-toes with the signature bow, to be precise.
Now while a shoe addiction has been with me since infanthood and my first pair of embroidered booties, I had never considered (albeit fantasized wildly!) shelling out the equivalent of a month’s rent or mortgage payment on shoes—however spectacular they may be.
So it is with this in mind, I must explain they were purchased slightly under duress. You may want to use this as a cautionary tale of drinking and shopping, as many vodka cocktails were consumed prior to slipping my feet into the most perfect pair of shoes in the world.
It also did not help (or did, depending on how you look at it) that the Holt Renfrew sales associate most truthfully declared that no feet were ever made to wear these shoes as mine so obviously were, and that I could wear them with anything, anywhere, at anytime. God knows I tried to hold her wholly responsible in the morning…
But surprisingly, my morning-after buyers remorse was slight and fleeting, and vanished completely when my husband Cinderella-slipped them back on my feet, and I admired their simple magnificence.
There is something beautiful about an exquisitely-crafted pair of shoes, and while I have yet to find the occasion for them to make their Calgary debut, I have strutted more than once through my bedroom—marveling at how my feet, were indeed, made for this pair.
And while just the other day a colleague remarked that the first pair of designer shoes is like a gateway drug to the world of opulent footwear, I have made myself a promise to curb whatever appetite might be lurking in the seedy underbelly of my present denial.
Or at least steer clear of the shoe department for the next couple months.
Ok, month.