Ok, I am prepared to be laughed out of the land of normal people for this one, but here goes... When I first heard of open-toe or peep-toe boots the very idea seemed utterly laughable and/or hideous to me. I remember seeing this picture of Shakira with these square shaped open-toe boots and thinking girlfriend was cray-cray. It's a boot! Why would you have an open toe? Craziness! I thought the same when I saw Rachel Bilson in her Margiela sandal booties... wtf?
And then, of course, I had my eyes opened to the possibilities. I understand this is a trend a lot of people (perhaps most people) can live without, and I also have to admit that a lot of the options are completely ugly, but even though I still think a full-on, knee-high boot with an open toe is silly, I am warming to the idea of the open-toe bootie. I also think that the open- toe aspect can be played up with colored tights and look cool and unusual. As seen in my previous post being rocked by Mary-Kate Olsen (someone whose style I definitely respect but who I also find can be very hit-or-miss), those Proenza Schouler beauties have me relatively obsessed about getting my own. I have limitations when wearing heels and one of them is that they absolutely cannot be above 3 inches or I will die. I'm serious--I will crumple up into a ball of pain after wearing any heel that is above that height, so I find ways to sneak additional height in and my favorite way to do that is with a platform. I can go up to 4 inches in a heel as long as the platform is at least 1 inch. But platform boots are really hard to find in anything remotely attractive that isn't 5-6 inches of crazy heel.
As I have written here before, I am a huge fan of Jeffrey Campbell shoes, even though I know sometimes they just rip off runway styles (I kind of have no problem with this), and lo and behold, of all of the options out there that are kind of wearable, he has this sandal that kind of feels like what I want (and it seems very walkable):
Linea Paolo boot is more along the lines of a straight-up open toe bootie, no sandal implied, but it is growing on me:
Unfortunately they are plum out of my size, and it sucks, because they are really affordable (and have a platform, and look kinda cool).
In my endless hours of searching for something akin to the Proenza shoe I have realized that the whole cutout boot/sandal boot/open toe bootie thing is a huge trend right now in fashion circles (and coming soon to a suburbia near you...) but as such, it's hard to find anything that comes close to the aesthetic cleanliness of a true designer shoe. I'm waiting for a decent knockoff and who knows when that will happen. Jeffrey Campbell's Marly sandal is kind of along those lines, but not quite and it's also an awfully high heel with a vaguely stripper-ish vibe, so I don't know whether I'm up to it, and these Miss Sixty's are also too high for me... le sigh!
My only option, it seems, is to gaze lustfully at the Proenza flat version of this boot on the Saks website. For some reason, the heeled version Mary-Kate wears is nowhere to be found yet, but at over $1,000 this shoe is waaaaayyyy out of the price range for a normal person like me and can I mention that I really don't like it in brown?
Still, a girl can (and does) dream...
