Flip Flops

Flip Flops, oh, flip flops
I don't understand your appeal
The smack, sucking sound
As you beat me on the heel.

As a shoe, you should
beautify and protect my feet
Instead you make them dirty
as I walk down the street.

As an item of clothing
you should enhance my look
Instead you detract from it,
like a petty crook.

Curse you, oh, flip flops
Cashing in on the heat
A true sandle you are not;
You are full of deceit.

I've never hated flip flops more than I do now.* In highschool, I adored them for a while. Soemthing about freedom, ease, and them being against school rules, but everyone wore them anyways until the school was forced to allow them. But being on a college campus, and seeing them rain or shine. Hearing them all day and then all night. (Dorms suck.) It was so (whiny, vally girl voice here) annoying when one of my professors wore flip flops to class. As she walked about lecturing, the pop-pop was annoying the shiznit out of me. (That's right. I'm wit it.) What annoys me more is when I see a cute dress and then the wearer has to wear flip flops. Ugly flip flops. Ugly rubber flip flops. Just ruins the look.

But, I know I'm in a minority. Nothing beats flip flops in the casual/summer department. Really, you can at least some nice looking slip on sandles. They look so much better! I'm really into anklestraps now. Since I have tiny ankles, I have no worries about them and they are invaluable at securing shoes on my feet. And look how sweet those sandles look with my new dress. "My new" as in "I made it myself" my new. Just imagine if I had worn a pair of these. Yeah, makes me shiver too. If you must buy your shoes from Old Navy, why not buy any of these? Any of those would look adorable with a sweet dress. My favorite gold espadrilles, which I wear all the time, are from Old Navy last year, so I actually think their shoes are quite cute. Aside from the $2/$3/$5 flip flops, which I probably wouldn't even wear on the beach. I sport something more like this on the beach.

Outfit Specs: Click piccy to be taken to flickr page for details. You'll porobably get a better post on this dress once I add pockets.

For Sandles,
Ivy Frozen

* This bout of anger has nothing to do with the fact that my favorite (and only) pair of flip flops now rub irritatingly between my toes and my favorite pair of sandles in a flip flop style now stab me (they draw blood!) in the toes.

From the Blogasphere Number Equix

So, one of my favorite bloggers, The Bargain Queen, has posted the first ever Fabulous! Festival. It's like the Carnival of Couture, for those who remember that, except this one doesn't have a weekly theme. I totally want a weekly theme or question, but the bloggers hosting it for the week can decide to do that if they want, so yay! I try to participate one week... After finals are over....

But on point, through the Fabulous! Festival line up of posts, I found College Fashion.net College fashion! I thought. I'm a college student! It should be good for me! I totally ignored the fact that most campus fashion involves flip flops, pajama bottoms, and a college sweatshirt. Really though, fashion magazines tend to go from teen to professional woman, totally skipping those cellege years. It's like being a tween all over again. The kid's section or the junior's? The junior's or the misses'?

Anywho, I went through the posts and discovered their Tips for style and fashion. Oh! I thought. Let's see what they have to say. Maybe I'll find something useful. You can never have too many tips... While I'll second the first two, but tips three and four leave me cold.

Number four just really perplexes me:

Fashion and Style Tip #4:
How much money should you spend on a dress?

Since dresses are complete outfits in themselves, add up what you would normally spend on an entire outfit (minus shoes and accessories) to figure out about what you should spend on a dress. For example: jeans + tank + cardigan = dress.

What??? Am I the only one lost? It's kind of like those dictionary entries where you look up a word to find its meaning and then have to look up the words used in the definition of it. Really, the cost of a dress should depend mostly on the dress in question and yourself.
a) How often do you plan to wear the dress?
b) How nice is the dress? Special occasion or casual? Handmade, machine made, or mass made?
c) The craftmanship/construction of the dress. Material, design, stitching.
d) How much is the dress worth to you/How much do you love it?
e) What's your budget? i.e. how much can you spend and still be able to afford food, pay your rent, anything else you want to do, etc.

All those should be considered when deciding how much to spend on a dress. Unless you plan on buying jeans/a tank/a cardi to wear with the dress, I don't see what they have to do with buying a dress. Plus, adding together what you would "normally" spend on an outfit makes no sense to me, since I have no "normal" amount spent and my daily outfits vary heavily. Though hey, if you understand this system and it works for you, far be it from me to stop you. Apparently, I'm the one out of four who thinks that is one of the strangest things she has ever heard.

But then, Shoewawa quipped in with a similar thing, the "two for the price of one" philosophy. I also think that is BS since almost any item of clothing I own should be "two for the price of one" at least, or I won't buy it no matter the price. Items that can only be worn one way are rarly worn in my closet, and therefore it's basically junk preventing me from getting something I'll wear more often.


My problem with tip Number three is that it's not a universal tip.

Fashion and Style Tip #3:Buy your heels 1/2 size too big!

This is one of the first rules of high-heel buying. Since your feet naturally slide forward in heels, buying them a half size larger will make them fit correctly.
Wearing heels that are comfortable and correctly fitted will make you look a
thousand times better while walking in them.

Buying a half size up for me does not equal more comfortable. It equals shoes falling off my feet and possibly me tripping when the shoes do this. Like comenter Ann, I find going a half-size down works better for my feet. My feet then do not slip and slide in the first place and instead fit inside the shoe as if it's a second skin. Really, my actual size, 8N, fits the best, but 7 1/2 M fits a close second. Also not that I don't do pointy toeed shoes; round or almond is my pfreference.

My correction of this tip is to just try on shoes in various sizes. Every shoe and foot is different. Try your normal size plus a size up and a size down. Walk around the store at your normal speed to get a a good feel for how each pair feels on your feet, and buy the size that fits you best and is the most comfortable. Frankly, if shoes cause you a lot of pain, I advicate against buying them. Shoes should be pretty and comfortable, or at least not unbearably painful. I wholeheartedly agree with the last sentence of that tip though.

All the blogs linked to in the post are liked enough by me to:

a) read them
b) post about them
c) link to them


Outfit Specs: Click piccy to be taken to it's flickr page for more information.

The Outlaw,
Ivy Frozen