Shoes : A tempestuous relationship

It has been a love-hate relationship most of my adult life. I have a feeling that, given a slightly different situation, I would have much more of an obsession with shoes – cute shoes, cool shoes, comfortable shoes, shoes for every purpose, day, and outfit. However, my obsession with shoes has taken a slightly different form.

Trying to find them.

Here’s the deal – I wear size 13/14 men’s shoes – which translates to a 15/16 women’s shoe. While I have a decent chance, in almost any store, of  finding a pair of men’s shoes that fit at least passably well, there are days a girl wants nothing more than to wear something that doesn’t make her feet look large, square, and masculine. However, most companies don’t even make size 15 or 16 women’s shoes.

The ironic thing is that there are a few companies out there that make lots and lots and lots of women’s shoes in sizes 15 or 16. I can get five inch heels, spike heels, platform shoes, wedges, leather, buckles, and plastic without a problem. I can even get knee-high, lace-up, black pleather platform boots that you rarely see people wear outside of photo shoots and dance clubs.

But a pair of work-appropriate, reasonably comfortable women’s dress shoes? Forget it. For years and years, there was only one company I could find that made shoes that even began to meet that description – and I do, in fact, have two pairs of their shoes. The original pairs were about $200 apiece, and after ten years of hard use (I was in competitive speech and debate, after all, and that meant three full days of running across college campuses in these shoes, three or four weeks every month), I have had to have them each resoled about six times. On top of that, they aren’t what I would call comfortable – they’re passable, and my feet don’t usually go numb after wearing them for five or six hours.

So, for the most part, I have ended up just wearing flip-flops or tennis shoes. Not my ideal, but hey, they fit and they are relatively comfortable. Most of the time, I’m technically violating dress codes at my place of work  – flip flops, no matter how comfy, rarely look professional. Most of the time, I also have not many other options. I do have a pair of boots that look great, but they are admittedly about 2 sizes too small and after just a few hours in them, my feet start to really hurt. I’ve worn those so often they need to be resoled now too – I didn’t really care that my feet hurt, they looked good, gosh darn it!

I’ve also got quite the selection of “cool” shoes – four inch spike heels, check. Big chunky shoes with flames on them and a secret compartment, check. I’ve even got the slip-ons that look like the belong in an issue of Old Man Fashion Weekly – Large Print Edition.

Every once in a while (usually when my latest pair of sandals is starting to wear through), I start looking for shoes. There have always been a few sites that catered to large-size shoes, but for the most part they stopped at size 14 and the shoes were $150 or more a pair. Tonight, though, I discovered that Barefoot Tess, a retailer that usually was just too expensive for my tastes, was carrying shoes that were not only cute, but “run wide” in size 15, and came in under $75 a pair.

I just about jumped for joy. Then I promptly blew a large portion of my first new-job paycheck on two pairs.

and the Barefoot Tess "Doll" shoe

They’re both size 15, but they reportedly run wide. So I’m keeping my toes crossed that they will actually fit. If they do, I will be more excited than I know what to do with myself. So now, it’s on to the obsessive clicking of the “track my order” button.