A Shoe-tastrophe

A few weeks ago, I attended an annual fund-raising fashion show gala that my graduate program puts on. It was a really lovely event and gave me a much-needed excuse to dress up a little. All was great, until I got home and realized that my keys were not in my clutch, but were in my school bag, in my locker . . .  for some reason I couldn't find a cab or an Uber and ended up walking all the way to school and back. To add insult to injury, my go-to black heels which have been with me through every job, grad school, and recruiting event for the past three years . . . decided to pick that moment to give up on life. They'd been on their last leg (err, heel) for a while, but they just decided to stop staying on my feet. I had to do a sort of scoot/hobble/waddle all the way from the LES to NYU. Sadly, this was not my only recent shoe-tastrophe. A few months earlier, the heel broke on my favorite pair of party shoes mid-dance floor at a friend's wedding. (not that that stopped me when "Blurred Lines" came on) and the suede black booties that I love are starting to develop some serious bald spots (someone, please invent rogain for shoes!). 

I needed to invest in some new shoes ASAP and I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted:

Oh, and all of the above had to be at least moderately comfortable. Easy peasy, right? 

Ha! Finding a shoe that's both comfortable and stylish is a bit like looking for the holy grail (minus a shirtless Indiana Jones). But, I had too many pairs of shoes that I didn't wear because they seemed to be designed by some sort of mediaeval torture expert (Note to my 20-year-old self: buying a pair of shoes knowing that you'd need to take tequila shots to numb the pain is never a good idea). 

* * *

Honestly, the reason I'd put off buying new shoes for so long (both those pairs of heels were more than 3 years old), was that I couldn't find shoes that satisfied both my fashion and functional needs. The pairs I found would be one or the other, but rarely both (and the ones that were both were a little out of my price range). I'd read about the Ann Taylor "Perfect Pump" on both Capital Hill Style and Extra Petite but had always disregarded it. Not to sound snobbish, but I don't always associate Ann Taylor with the highest quality and their styles can skew a little old-lady for me. The "perfect pump" seemed fine but nothing special. But, my latest shoe disaster had put me in a particularly vulnerable state and I decided I needed to swallow my pride and at least give Ann Taylor the courtesy of browsing their selection on-line (it was that or start showing up to events barefoot). And . . .  I was really, really surprised. I mean, not everything was amazing, but if this was what old-ladies were wearing on their feet than I was in. 

I was really only planning on buying on pair and trying it out . . . but somehow I ended up ordering three (just to try you know. I wasn't gong to keep all of them) that fit all of my criteria above. Check back tomorrow for my review! And, someone please call a shoe-therapist because I might have a problem.