Remember these glittery gold wedges I picked up for $10 last week?
I couldn’t wait to wear them but I needed a low-key look for kinder and school pick-ups, since when has that ever stopped me from dressing to the nines? So I threw myself into a pair of black jeans (gotta love the comfy, stretchy Jay Jay’s jeans), a red top for a bit of colour and my favourite snug fur vest.
Glitter shoes in daylight: the whole method
A sparkly shoe is not a going-out shoe unless you make it one. The mistake is treating it as the start of a glamorous outfit rather than the end of an ordinary one.
Everything above these wedges is deliberately plain. Black jeans, a solid red top, a vest. Nothing patterned, nothing else shiny, no jewellery competing at eye level. The shoes are the only thing in the outfit with anything to say, so what people read is she has good shoes, not she is overdressed for the school gate.
Flip that around (put glitter shoes with a sequinned top and a metallic bag) and the same wedges look like you are on your way somewhere else.
One thing sparkles. Everything else is matte. It is the same rule I use for sequins, and it has never let me down.
Where to put the colour
The red top is doing something specific here, and it is worth pointing out.
Gold and glitter both sit in the warm, metallic family, and a whole outfit in that register turns beige and disappears. One clear, saturated colour somewhere in the middle of the body gives the eye something to land on before it travels down to the shoes.
Red, cobalt, emerald, anything strong will do it. What does not work is another neutral, because then the shoes are competing with nothing and end up looking like the only idea you had.
Wedges that will not punish you
And I’m happy to report, girls, the wedges were ultra comfortable. I stomped around the shops looking for bargains for ages and they didn’t dig in or hurt a bit.
That is not typical of a $10 shoe, so here is how to tell before you buy.
Look at the platform under the toe. The real measure of comfort is not the heel height, it is the difference between the heel and the front. A 10cm wedge with a 3cm platform puts your foot at the same angle as a 7cm heel. That gap is everything.
Bend the sole. It should flex a little at the ball of the foot. A wedge that is rigid end to end forces your whole leg to swing rather than your foot to roll, and that is what makes calves ache by mid-afternoon.
Check where the strap sits. An ankle strap that crosses the bone will rub within an hour. It wants to sit above or below it.
Press the footbed. Some padding under the ball of the foot is worth more than any amount of leather elsewhere.
Wedges are genuinely the most walkable heel there is, because your weight spreads across the whole sole instead of balancing on a point. For a day on your feet they beat a block heel every time.
Buying sparkle that survives more than one wear
Glitter shoes have a reputation for falling apart, and the cheap ones absolutely do. The difference is in how the sparkle is attached.
Embedded beats glued. Glitter set into a resin or a coated finish stays put. Loose glitter stuck to a surface will shed onto your carpet, your car and everything else. Rub your thumb firmly across the toe in the shop. If anything comes away on your skin, it will keep coming away.
Sequins want to be stitched. On a fabric shoe, look at whether sequins are sewn or glued. Sewn survives a wet Melbourne footpath; glued does not.
Check the seams and the toe. The toe box takes every scuff, so that is where a shoe shows its age first.
For $10 you can afford to be philosophical about it. For $150 you cannot, and that is exactly when this check matters most.
The glitter had well and truly landed
Mum and Dad were shopping in Hong Kong last year and couldn’t believe the saturation of sparkly shoes in the stores. Glittery shoes were being featured in the latest Vogue, Marie Claire, et al.
They have never entirely gone away since, which tells you something. A metallic shoe behaves like a neutral once you own one: gold goes with camel, cream, denim, black and every warm colour there is, which is more than you can say for most shoes you would call sensible.
(From 2012, so those $10 wedges are a distant memory. The comfort checks are what I would still do on any wedge.)
If there is a pair of shoes in your wardrobe you love and never wear because you cannot work out what goes with them, that is one of the quickest wins in a styling session.
Where a gold shoe actually goes
Because “goes with everything” is not much help when you are standing in front of the wardrobe.
With denim, any denim. Gold against blue is the easiest win there is, and it works from ripped jeans to a denim dress.
With camel, cream and tan. Same warm family, so the shoe blends rather than shouts. This is the grown-up version.
With black. Maximum contrast, so the shoe becomes the entire point. Best when the rest is very simple.
With olive, rust and forest green. Gold sits beautifully against the earthy end of the spectrum, and almost nobody tries it.
The one I would avoid is gold with silver hardware elsewhere in the outfit: bag clasps, belt buckles, watch. That is the single combination where mixing metals stops looking deliberate and starts looking accidental.
‘From the fruit of their lips people enjoy good things … ’ Proverbs 13:2