Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Shoes and the 1980s


Last night because the weather was rainy, RB and I took our usual Monday evening post-prandial stroll at the mall. This was rather painful to me because of the ubiquitous cute shoe problem. Some time in the last couple of years, women's shoes got extremely awesome (excepting the horrible emergence of the Crocs, which I was thinking of as "Frogs" until I asked Robert to clarify the name because that just sounded strange) and I am painfully desirous of some new ones.

My plaid, "reconstructed" look sneaks I blogged about
before (that I bought last Christmas, which is a long time to go without buying shoes!) remain among the most awesomely perfect for wearing with shorts, a skirt, or jeans, but look at the plethora of other adorable options available in the "casual" line from Rocket Dog. I could really do with a pair of the red Pranksters. The Juicy Fruit (which I like in beige) reminds me strongly of the flowered Keds I used to wear in the 80s, although mine never actually got that beat up, of course. There is something about the skirts and tank tops I am making for the summer that desperately calls out to be accompanied by cute, ratty sneakers and skimmers. I am starting to wonder if I can purchase some knock-off versions from Target or something (e.g. these and these) and call that Operation Cheap Ass compatible because they are only $13 instead of $35. I would love to find a cheap-ass version of the cute Keds mary jane slip-ons too. Tam has already experienced my shoe lust from a trip to her mall in Colorado in May.

Overall, I'm pretty well pleased by the popularity of the 80s style right now. After spending the last too-many years looking at hideous 70s style stuff, the return of
Vans, for instance, is a treat. They have an entire little Vans store at the mall, which was convenient for reminding RB of what Vans look like. RB apparently wore the more clean-cut preppy Sperry Top-siders during that era rather than the skater style Vans version. (Ah, Target has a knock-off of the women's Vans also.) RB was glad that he could buy all-black Converse All Stars these days, which is great, but it's amazing how Chucks held their own throughout this entire time. (I had a pair of standard pink Chucks that I wore all the time in junior high.) Classic Converse shoes are just totally old school and have never looked wrong.

I also mentioned to RB that I'm happy to see Jams-style
shorts making a comeback (which I did not own, but instead had many look-alikes that my mom sewed for me). He said that he remembered the brand Ocean Pacific being really popular for wildly colored shorts. I most strongly associate OP with the white t-shirts with a sailboat and the OP logo that was de rigueur when I was a kid. (No, I did not own one.) And I mentioned that I still owned a Hobie t-shirt, which prompted him to remark that Hobie was a real sailing company, so I said, "Yeah, my t-shirt is from Hobie, so it's a little more authentic than your t-shirt, so it gives me a bit more credibility on a sailboat, so..." but since he has not seen the SNL video of the Demonstrative Woman who is always one-upping everyone she encounters, he didn't twig to it. Tam, I relate this event for your own particular amusement.

(P.S. I still can't figure out why including a photo makes the font shrink down to this tiny size. I'm sorry for the visual annoyance of this post. Anybody know anything about this stuff who can help a girl out? I've struck out looking for information on the web; apparently this issue is too basic for anyone to have posted something about, so far as I can see. I've tried posting in "large" font size to see if that is better. Maybe I should be buying Blogspot for Dummies instead of a pair of shoes.)

2 comments:

Tam said...

Go over to the html tab and eliminate every tag that is "div" or "/div" and it should fix the post. I have to do this every time and it's kind of irritating but it does work. You might have to put in manual line breaks for the paragraphs.

Anonymous said...

Shoes looks awesome....I'd be great if i may a get a same style from josef seibel collection...