Jimmy Choo Shoes and I Don't Care

Jimmy Choo Shoes and I Don't Care

Unlike a lot of women, I hate to shop for clothing. Online retailers get much of my business. I can order pretty much anything I need from the Internet with a quick Google search. But I have a daughter. She loves to shop. Her estrogen levels peak with the words “sale” and “new arrivals.”

Unfortunately, the downside of online shopping is shipping. It takes at least two days for delivery. My husband and I were invited to a party where the suggested attire was “festive wear.” The closest thing I had to that was a lime green and yellow muumuu my aunt bought in Hawaii a hundred years ago. I needed party pants, and I needed them fast. So off I went to shop at local stores with my daughter and her fashion guru friend.

“Miss Kristen, try this on.” It was a request I heard repeatedly from Katie’s friend, a young man with impeccable taste who knows Jimmy Choo shoes and is visiting the highbrow fashion district of Highland Park Village in Dallas for his summer vacation.

He dangled a dress for my inspection, noting the price tag at the armpit.

“It’s a 14 Wide,” he announced. “I think it will fit you.”

“Look, hon, the ‘W’ is for ‘Women,’ not ‘Wide,’” I corrected him scornfully.

“Well, it means ‘Wide’ in shoes. Speaking of shoes, you need some new ones.”

We spent hours like that, carting outfits to the dressing room, Katie and Mr. Picky waiting to see the results.

“Do you have it on? What does it look like? Let us see!” they implored.

“I’m going to need scissors to get out of this,” I growled, immobilized in a tight-fitting nightmare.

“But how does it LOOK?” they cried. And I cried, too. I felt far from festive trapped in a twisted tunic of glitter and taffeta.

By some miracle, we found a pair of black flowing pants and a spaghetti-strap top that didn’t look too bad.

“The sash bothers me,” I worried aloud. “I’m not certain it works with the top.”

“Are you kidding?” Pro-Sash Man exclaimed. “It’s works! And look. You can take it off easily. It’s only tacked on, not sewn down the full longness of it.”

“I think you mean ‘length.’”

“Longness, length, whatever. Use your seam ripper and take it off. We need to look at shoes!”

My feet ached, my back throbbed, and my credit card fell limp. I had something to wear to the party, and I wanted to go home.

“I already have some shoes. Let’s go.”

A look of horror crossed his face. My daughter retreated in disgust.

“Miss Kristen, you aren’t planning to wear those same black pumps, the ones you wore to the Christmas party, are you?” The puppy dog eyes filled with terror got to me.

“Oh, all right,” I conceded. “We’ll go to one shoe store, but that’s it. These dogs are barking, and they have no desire to squeeze into four-inch heels.”

Off we went, the two of them chattering about stilettos and snakeskin, while I braced myself for more retail exposure.

“Try these on, Miss Kristen.” Three pairs of shoes greeted me with menacing smiles, the slender heels and pointed forms taunting my pinky toes with sadistic suggestions.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said. “Those would effectively hobble me. This event is at a horse farm, for heaven’s sake. I have to actually move around, preferably on my feet. Haven’t they got anything lower that doesn’t require blood-letting?”

Much to the chagrin of daughter and friend, I found nothing I liked better than the shoes I had at home. We left empty-handed while the teenaged shop-a-holics lectured me on the essential nature of women to desire lots of shoes, purses and jewelry.

I tried to enlighten their young minds with a lesson in “need” versus “want,” a soliloquy on the beauty of minimalism and the basic concept of home economics. But, they tuned me out with iPods and cell phones, suddenly very tired and eager to go home.