Thoughts On Buying Leather Shoes

The next element of the outfit is the sports jacket. It's dark gray, has minimal buttons near the bottom, well-tailored shoulders and a faux-velvet lining. I feel like a million bucks whenever I slip it on, it carries a lot of pizzazz with it, quite a bit of stature. How it meshes with the hat, exactly, I have no idea, all I know is that, again, it fits my mentality. As much as the hat does. 

I slip on my sunglasses. The rubber nose guard on these is long since gone, but they block the sun on bright days and by night they reflect passing lights off them in vibrant purple hues. Everything is darkened by them, and they completely wrap around my eyes. The final piece is the satin gold scarf, which I wrap behind my neck and then let hang out a little in the front. All things considered, the complete ensemble is enough to make heads spin. One time a guy sitting on the curb asked me if I was a leprechaun. 

The only part I've been missing up until today were some really good shoes. The shoes I have now are starting to wear thin, they have a futuristic mesh top that all things considered isn't all that durable, and they're splitting open in some areas. They're tennis shoes, and while I have nothing against tennis shoes in theory, they are kinda bland and don't really fit with the rest of the stuff. So I decided to get some nice leather dress shoes, considering I've had these ones for around a year at this point. I figured I could do better. 

I had a few stipulations going into the buying process- one being that the shoes had to be made out of nice solid leather, no imitation plastic and no mesh tops. The second stipulation was that they had to have some kind of padding, they had to allow for decent movement and travel, because I walk a lot. And the third limitation I set on myself was that they should have laces, because I wanted durability and I wanted a shoe that wouldn't immediately slip off if I were to step from the bus. Having shoes that stay on is important, given that in my line of work I sometimes travel 10 miles daily. 

I hit up a lot of places in my quest for the perfect shoe, always remembering these three criteria, keeping in mind that I wouldn't settle for less, that I was on a hunt and I wouldn't give up until I found the perfect shoe. The first place I tried had a ton of full-body mirrors leaning  everywhere, almost to the point where the store was like a carnival mirror maze. I'm not sure why you'd need a full-body mirror for shoes, most shoe stores I've been to in the past just have little ankle-high mirrors, because at the end of the day you're just looking at yourself in shoes. They had a clearance section, however for whatever reason it didn't go up to size 12, which is what I needed. It just stopped at 11. I find that kinda bizarre, I wonder what they do when they get size 12 clearance shoes, and why they don't stock any. At any rate, this place didn't have what I was looking for, while they did have some leather shoes which didn't look very comfortable they mostly just had tennis shoes with the mesh design. I'm not sure what it is with so many shoes today having a mesh design. It's supposed to let your feet breathe, I guess, but the mesh is really easy to break, as was the case with my current shoes. So I moved on from there.

I tried yet another store with yet another shoe rack that didn't go up to size 12, and they didn't even have any size 11 shoes, the shelf under size 11 was completely empty. I had gotten somewhat of a late start so I was worried that maybe all the shoe places had sold out. Nonetheless, I decided to try one more place, because I was in the midst of a lot of shops with potential. 

After a long time spent in the aisle of this last place, which was narrow and tall and covered with shoes, I happened on these leather ones. They were padded in the bottom, in two spots, they had thin laces, and from what I could tell they were authentic leather. I tried them on and they fit great. This place did have a size 12 aisle and while most of the shoes were overpriced, these ones were very reasonably priced. There was a similar pair for the same price, and it had a similar brand name so I'm inclined to think these are some kind of knockoff brand, but the other pair had ornamental designs which I felt were too flashy for my sensibilities, and they were also unnecessarily long for some reason, nearly an inch longer than the ones I chose. 

I was very happy to have stuck it out rather than buying impulsively at the first place, because the last place had a great selection and reasonable prices, and now I have these snappy leather shoes which I think will go great with the jacket and hat. From walking around in them some they seem incredibly durable, and they also apparently come with something called abrasion resistance. I dunno much about shoes or fashion in general, but I'm pretty sure I made the right choice and feel satisfied in my decision.