LAST week, about sequined ankle boots. This week, about sequined platform shoes.
I have a pair. The manner with which I came to have them is this. They were given to my mother by my youngest sister, Annette. They are sling-backed and open-toed, and done in sequined gold. They are some four inches high in the back and maybe half that in front. It was surely folly to think for even two minutes that they could possibly be worn by my 84-year-old mother, even if she has always, always been our poster mom for high heels. So guess who the shoes walked to, hahaha. They said, "Linda, Linda, wear us, wear us." Sometimes, you need only stand and wait.
The truth is, however, that even I can rarely dare to wear such high heels these days. In a senior moment, I had to accept that some time ago, and this month actually had to study orthopedic sandals.
I began with Birkenstock. Yes, the brand has been around since forever; we know, we know. I just never had to consider it and other such brands in terms of podiatric necessities. I do remember that in the 1970s, on the campus I was on, they were de rigeur more as trend than as healthy option. Or maybe that was just me. The "bakya" model we used to favor in those days eons ago still looks the same today.
The Birkenstock website says, "At the heart of our products is our unique, anatomically shaped footbed. Birkenstock invented the footbed." It is a "footbed" that has always felt healthy, somehow, and still feels healthy, even all these decades after. The same is true for their clogs.
After I moaned on Facebook about wishing that I could still wear stilettos, a friend named Marie Balangue advised me on Facebook to try Trippen. Unlike with Birks, I had no knowledge of this Brand of shoeses.
So I visited their website. The German brand has been around since the early 1990s. "With their unique soles, unconventional pattern technique and iconic silhouettes, Trippen shoes are designed to be timeless, and ever avant-garde."
There are regular looking shoes that look like just good shoes. There are oddly designed ones with a thick stilt in front and in back of each shoe. In the ballerina line are shoeseses mostly too thick, methinks, to be called that. Their heels models are in a word, interesting. Marie says there are adjustable models. Trippen is also all black. Nein color at all.
My internet search for healthy footwear leads me to many a site. Some of them have advice on how to choose shoes. Some of that advice makes a lot of sense. It does make sense for senior women to go for flats and/or heels no higher than two inches, wedgies, wide toed models, etc. But on the Figlia site, I still find myself attracted to high narrow heels, pointy toes, and models that have lovely high heels. Sigh.
I also learned from the site that Figlia is made in the Philippines, and part of the international line Celine. What about that.
And before I get reactions about the words shoes, "shoeses," and "shoeseses," I know, I know. Do you?