Don't Step On My Blue Suede Shoes

Anyone who knows me knows I loooove shoes. Really. I would marry them if I could.

One of my life’s dreams is to design my own shoe line. But it’s not quite as easy as starting your own clothing line. Mocking up a pair of strappy heels that won’t buckle under 130 pounds of flesh, or come flying off and stab some unsuspecting passer-by in the eye – because you know that would happen – isn’t as simple as mocking up a pair of pants. I’ve seen handmade shoes on Etsy and they’re nothing I would ever wear, so if anyone knows how one would go about starting their own shoe line…with no design education…and no money, let me know.

Back in the early 2000s I found the perfect pair of shoes. Topshop blue suede, strappy heels with a 40s vibe. They were comfortable to walk in and looked as good dressed up as with a pair of jeans. Elvis was right. You can do anything but don’t step on my blue suede shoes. I wore those shoes to death. I wore them in sun and rain, uphill and down dale. I wore them right up until my friends performed an intervention and told me I could wear them no more. They were a faded dirty blue, and the straps that were once able to contain my chubby toes were now losing the battle. Creeping toes aren’t pretty but still I needed to be told to retire them to shoe heaven.

I was stubborn. “Fine,” I thought “I won’t wear them any longer but I refuse to throw them away. I’m going to keep them and have a pair commissioned when I am fabulously wealthy” (still waiting on that by the way). They sat like an old plum at the top of my wardrobe, misshapen and dried out, for about four years. My mum, who owned a pair also that was far less worn out, offered me hers but alas her feet are much smaller than mine.

Skip to present day and I am on eBay, again, desperately hunting for ‘blue suede shoes,’ again. Out of nowhere I had the bright idea to search ‘Topshop’ (no, I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that before, either) and *insert sparkly heaven noise here* there they were. One pair of blue suede shoes deceptively described by the owner as teal colored, in pristine condition, in my size (well almost; they’re a little big but that never stopped Mary Kate and Ashley). Thank you shoe gods. They were listed at $15 and I was the only bidder for the whole week. But the shoes gods weren’t going to reward me so easily. I had to prove I really wanted them. About 10 minutes before the end some minion started bidding furiously against me. I tell you this only because it was a lesson to me in my eBay psychology. I lost all reason. I was not going to let those shoes get away no matter the cost. I was just throwing dollars at them to make sure that I wasn’t outbid seconds before the end. I won the shoes, in fact I’m wearing them now, but I scared myself. Thankfully I wasn’t bidding on anything more expensive because in the heat of the moment I probably would have sold my Grandma just to hold onto what I believed to be rightfully mine.

If you don’t love shoes this story will sound insane, or at least my enthusiasm for telling it will, but if you do love shoes you will know that this is a story with a very happy ending. And who knows, maybe in another ten years when my chubby toes have broken free of this pair, I will chance upon another pair of blue suede shoes, and the dried up carcasses of the previous ones can be my own creepy little legacy.