Two Things
Holiday sales, and a solemn vow to wear my weird shoes
Welcome to my occasional, when-I-feel-like-it bonus content about secondhand shopping and selling, minor fascinations, passing fancies, and old stuff! This is the same subscription as Just Some Lady and you are (obviously!) free to skip it.
I lost my mind a little bit last weekend and bought some things online, including some not-secondhand stuff. One, I ordered a cable-knit cotton cardigan from Lands’ End because all of my cardigans are wool, somehow? (Though I did unearth an old, mostly rayon LOFT cardigan from the depths of my closet a while ago. I love forgotten clothes!) Anyway, Lands’ End had a 50% off holiday sale (to be fair, they almost always have a 50% off sale) and the Rakuten rebate was 8%, so I went for it.
Two, I got a pair of silk pajama shorts from Quince, which were not on sale but were less expensive than equivalent shorts elsewhere. I have a list of things I might like to buy when I get a job, and somewhere on that list is Lunya silk pajamas, but for now that is a dream deferred.
Levi’s jeans were 30% off on their site, but guess what, they are about 75% off if you just buy someone’s old ones, so I traded some of my hoarded Poshmark sales dollars for a pair of Wedgie straight ankle jeans. I hate the name of these so much, but c’est la vie.
I sold stuff, too. Goodbye to an old J. Crew raincoat, a Madewell blouse I never quite loved, a dress from The Limited that I bought in 2014 and didn’t wear, and a Gap linen shirt. I tried to mail this stuff at my usual post office on Sunday and found the package drawer locked or stuck shut, something that is a fairly typical occurrence at my post office, even during business hours. So I drove to the smaller one, a little farther away, and sent them off to Virginia, California, Missouri, and Minnesota. (A lot and I mean A LOT of my old clothes end up in Minnesota, for some reason.)
I was puttering around in my closet over the holiday weekend, looking for a specific pair of shoes, and decided I simply had to find a way to wear some of the weirdo shoes I have and love but don’t wear very much (or haven’t worn at all yet).
I used to have… a lot of shoes, mostly very high heels, and I maintained a visual record of them on an old Flickr account that I seem to have decommissioned at some point. This is really too bad (for me, anyway) because I’ve passed on or sold a lot of those shoes, and I am sure there were some good ones I forgot. My shoe hoard is much smaller now, and I tend to wear everything a lot more often, but there are still some good pairs that don’t see the light of day.
I’ve spent what I would call Real Adult Money on shoes fairly few times in my life, for example, the shoes I wore when I got married. Otherwise, I dwell in a Converse-Superga-Clarks-Birkenstock world and mostly buy stuff on sale. BUT I do like to trawl eBay and other internet locations for cheap high-end shoes. Usually, they are cheap because they are kind of weird.
For example, I got these Jil Sander open-toe slides for a song on eBay. I watched them and watched them until the price came wayyyyy down. They are weird! They remind me of bookends, with the toes and heels rounded on one side and squared off on the other. But I love them.
They are actually super comfortable. I tried them on with a couple of different things this weekend, and I’m going to try to wear them more this summer.
These are old Hermès, and I bought them very cheaply from a woman on Instagram who had to admit they were too small for her:
But they fit me just fine! The big question about these shoes is: are they black or navy? This picture says black, but IRL they lean navy. Maybe that is what has been deterring me. This weekend, I decided IDGAF what color they are, I’m going to wear them with whatever I want. These are also very comfortable, and at some point were resoled or had rubber soles added. Practical!
These Prada Sport sandals from The RealReal aren’t necessarily weird, but there is something about the cork and the white, nubbly sole that I think gives me pause:
So I am just telling myself to get over it. Also, looking at this shoe reminds me I should probably get a pedicure soon. Toe maintenance is a summer concern I have thus far ignored. (That, and the website Wikifeet, is why there are no pictures of me wearing the slides or the sandals.)
Years ago, I took a year off from racing and decided to allocate race entry fees to thrifted/eBay/discount shoes. I had quite the collection including two pairs of vintage Fleuvogs and some insane heels that looked gorgeous and were horribly impractical. My crowning achievement was a pair of Prada platform sandals I stalked on eBay that had an opening bid price of $40. They had a 6" heel and a 2" platform sole. I was the lone bidder. They arrived in their Neiman Marcus box with the price tag still on - $550. I have worn them exactly once, in my engagement photos, with a Jessican McClintock for Gunne Sax party dress that I also found on eBay which was meant to indulge my inner 14 year old who always wanted one for the annual school semi-formal but could never afford it. I still have the shoes and I will never wear them again.