I bought new shoes.

Ta-da!

Here’s a close up. . 

Aren’t they darling? I’ve wanted shoes like this for a long time. They’re so awesome and old fashioned. I could just stare at them.

Now, I must confess, since this is a second hand blog. They’re not second hand. My mother has always said no to second shoes, and for better or for worse, it’s made me paranoid enough that now I just can’t buy second hand shoes, from germaphobia or guilt, I don’t know.

Anyway. They’re from Payless, hehe.

And on a more personal note: no, I did not pay less for these. They were super expensive. $35 I believe – a crime – but there was a 20% off deal that I didn’t know about. So I ended up getting a four-pair-pack of no-show socks for like two bucks. So that was nice. Those no show socks are lifesavers.

So I totally failed in the savings department. At a certain point it’s cost and worth, though, and I really wanted those shoes. And now that I had them, I needed to make sure their grand revealing was truly grand, and revealing.

 I had tried on a few outfits before this one. But they all were looking too country-girl. And I didn’t want a look. I just wanted to show off my new shoes.

My flowy black skirt, $3.99, I bought especially for church (more on that in a different post) really accentuated the brown in the shoes. Since I didn’t want anything to distract from the shoes, I picked a simple black V-neck for the top.

I think this might be the price you pay for second hand, but my “black” top was so faded, it was actually looking blue. You couldn’t see from the far away shot, but close up with flash, it’s obvious.

So I improvised.

This is one of those floppy long, short sleeve cardigans that I just tucked into the skirt. You can see the shirt underneath is a different color, but it isn’t as grossly ridiculous looking.

Now I have a very black, pretty plain outfit, with interesting looking brown shoes, but sometimes, you can help the eye catch things, and that’s where, in my opinion, the magic happens.

Do your eyes go straight back down to the shoes now?

You want to add little themes of color like this in your designs to ensure the eye moves pleasantly from top to bottom. It’d stink if you put all this work into an outfit and people aren’t even able to appreciate it in it’s entirety.

In this case, I could wear a brown leather headband also. That way, it’d go head-waist-shoes. But I didn’t feel like it, which I think was for the better. Because my focus here was to move the eyes down, waist-to-shoes.

Since, let’s not forget, it’s all about the shoes here.