Tee hee. I need to find entertainment in small ways these days, and apparently alliteration is my jam at the moment.
I've mentioned Trunk Club in a previous post. I've decided to use Trunk Club primarily when I'm looking for a particular category of item, such as this month, when I really need to address the shoe issue.
As you may recall, I've got that two-week 30th anniversary vacation coming up the second half of May. My husband loves to spend most of our vacation on the hoof. I'm serious--it's not unusual for us to be on our feet for 8-10 hours a day, packing on the miles.
I don't want to wear gym sneakers all day every day. I do have a good pair of walking/hiking shoes, but they look like hiking shoes. Good for trails but not exactly the thing for wandering about European cities. It may seem silly but I want to feel like I look at least something approaching "good" when we're on this vacation: nice outfits, nice shoes. However, I still have to be able to walk comfortably all day every day. That being said, I'm not putting style ahead of comfort. I would like to believe I could have both! So I put my Trunk Club stylist Amber on the case. The shoes I got in my first Trunk Club are still my favorite dress shoes (worn 2 or 3 times now and no complaints), so I know she does shoes well! I gave her a long list of criteria: no heels; max heel support; can go with X colors of bottoms; price range, etc.
The box preview she sent me the first time had four pairs of "urban sneakers," much like my Sperrys. I love my Sperrys and wouldn't mind having another pair similar in a different color, but I also wanted some other options. I removed one of the options she sent and sent her a message asking about espadrilles or other flats. She replaced the one option I'd removed with two others that fit my request. So, yesterday, I got five pairs of shoes to try on in the comfort of my own home!
Ironic, isn't it, that the day I got a shipment of spring/summer walking shoes, I woke up to this outside?
You can use the forward/back controls on the gallery to see the shoes. I've captioned the bottom of each image with the brand and a brief comment. (If you're reading this by email, it'll probably drop all the photos directly into the email. If you're on a blog reader, you may have to go to the website to see the gallery.)
I'm definitely keeping the blue Toms. They're great for casual wear, will go with a lot of stuff in my closet, and I've heard Toms are really comfortable. I'd asked for Toms specifically because I wanted to try them, so I'm happy. I'm still a little on the fence about the open-toed Toms. I absolutely love the way they look. Great summer shoe. They're also really comfortable in all ways with one caution: they have the potential of rubbing painfully across my toes if I'm wearing them all day. I'm wearing them around the house as much as possible during my 5-day "try-on" before I have to return whatever I'm not keeping, to see if that toe opening softens up at all. If any of you have these shoes by Toms, I'd appreciate hearing your experience!
If you're not familiar with Toms shoes, for every shoe you buy they donate a pair to a child in need. Love that!
I'm heading to a local mall with a lot of really good shoe stores this afternoon to try on some other pairs I've seen online. I'm not agin' buying more than two new pairs for this spring/summer. Remember all those Crocs flats I bought last summer? They didn't stand the test of time. Fortunately, I got all of them on sale because I'm now donating every pair, sadly. I did get a lot of wear out of them through the fall but found they were difficult to wear all day on my feet for work--depending on the shoe, they'd get too hot, too smelly (yuck), give me blisters, or start making odd "bodily noises" when I walked. I bought a bunch of socks that go with flats but they didn't help much. I'm keeping one pair of Crocs sandals I had because they're still really comfortable and I only wear them casually, so they're okay. Meanwhile, I'm back in the market for good spring/summer work shoes.