Tango Shoe Divas

I am considering several firsts: buying tango shoes on the Internet, trying a platform, and designing my own shoes.

I have some limitations. My feet have fallen arches and joint pain in the big toes as a result. (Any favorites among metatarsal pads?) My best discovery is gel toe spacers. I wear flat shoes with orthotics to work and put the orthotics in my Sansha sneakers for other dancing (contra, swing). I’m only 27 and I want to keep my feet from getting worse! I have been dancing tango in low heeled cross-strap Werner Kerns, but I’m feeling the beautiful shoes calling my name… besides, I recently tried my first pair of hard leather soles for tango and I can never go back! So, new shoes are in order and I’m not finding the right selection, even in New York.

I had Tango Wear recommended by a friend of mine and I love all the options. I’ve narrowed it down to several styles but the color choices are daunting. I want to go beyond black, but I’m not fond of the stereotypical red-black combination. I want purple-green, turquoise-orange, silver-black (not all on the same shoe). Am I crazy? I need your input.

Here are the STYLES I’m considering. Because of my foot issues, I’ve ruled out sandal toes. It’s too risky without being able to try them on. A full heel cage gives me needed stability. I’m sticking to a heel under 3″; I’m happy about the 6cm option! Probably a .5cm platform so my toes can still flex. Preferences on heel styles? Tango Wear offers flared and straight. I’m inclined to go with the flared for stability, but do you think the straight would look better on any of these models?

The fun ones: (remember, I’m coming from plain black Werner Kern ballroom shoes)

Under Baires: I love the strap across the heel look.

Eduviges: I love this heel cage even more, but it only comes in a 7.5cm heel.

The safeties:

Alfonsina: the stable cross-strap design

Or Aroma de Mujer

Or Zigana

Tanguera for maximum coverage.

Or Marmolina:

The comfort shoe:

Sabrina: love the heel cage and it comes in 4.5, 5, and 5.5cm! They can make this a closed toe, right? Of course they can.

Now for the COLORS!! I haven’t emailed Tango Wear yet to find out what’s possible, so I’m using my imagination. Another important question: durability. I’ve read that the metallics don’t last long. How does suede wear? Does patent leather get scuffed beyond recognition? Will the silver dots on the black suede get rubbed off? Does satin just get dirty? I would like to mix textures: suede on patent, metallic on leather, etc.

For a neutral shoe (the safety):

Beige with gold

Animal!

Black satin with white polka dots, white or silver leather

Black suede with silver dots, silver leather

Black base with pink trim

For a fun shoe:

Metalized blue and orange. It’s not featured on their page, but they must have a regular blue leather I could use as a base, right? The orange is for accents.

Various combinations of black and purple. Add green trim for contrast? Probably for the Sabrina, since the low heel is purple.

Since it takes so long for Tango Wear to arrive, should I order one to try it out, or go for all three at once? If I order now, I might get them by Christmas!

Marguerite

Marguerite writes:

I would like the opinions and expertise of the divas on an important issue: PLATFORMS.
I’m looking to buy my first pair of platforms, possibly from Tango Wear. Pros, cons, preferred height, flexibility, stability?

I have a lot to say about platforms, but I am short on time so I will be brief. I like them. I really like the ones I just got from Tango Wear, but they were kind of a PITA to deal with. Definitely read my post about my most recent pair, before ordering. If you are concerned about flexibility, get the .5 cm platform, wrapped in suede or a soft leather. Patent wrapped platforms will be less flexible (I have a pair like that that I hate - I call them the Frankenstein Shoes). They also offer a 1 cm platform (which is what you find everywhere else, like Tara Tango) but I currently love the .5 cm as a compromise between flexibility and padding. I don’t really like Tango Wear’s added ball of foot padding, I find that the platform takes care of it and lasts longer… That’s all I can say for now, I have to go back to cutting drywall out of my bathroom. I’d MUCH rather be talking about tango shoes!

nance2dance’s question is a toughie…

Dear Divas,

Can you recommend ANY shoes I can wear to dance tango?

I have Morton’s Neuroma, a big angry nerve ending squished between my toe bones in the ball of my foot. I got it from learning ballroom in regular heels (not proper dance shoes).

Basically, I’m not supposed to wear heels if I don’t want lots of pain. But what’s a dance lover to do? I’ve been getting into tango more and more wearing some flat Reeboks that look something like a water shoe. I have GOT to start tangoing in heels! Any advice? Brands? What to look for in a dance shoe?

I’ve never bought “dance” shoes before…

Thanks,
nance2dance

I know nothing about Morton’s Neuroma, but I feel for her. My two suggestions would be to choose a low heel if possible, maybe an open toe to give the tootsies some room to breathe… Would some arch support help relieve the pressure? I actually had the exact opposite problem, my toe bones would spread over a night dancing and then make really funny noises going back into place!

So does anyone else have any experience to share?

Emma writes:

I have a problem with my slingbacks and, since you have so much experience with different shoes, I’m hoping you’ll know somthing that can help. When I lift my foot, the stiletto stays on the ground and there is a 1/2 inch gap between my foot and the shoe. Needless to say this makes dancing in them very unstable. The ankle strap is fine, it is the strap that connects the ankle strap vertically to the shoe that is too long. These straps are not the thicker, slingbacks I see on your page - they are as thin as the ankle strap. What can I do? Should I have someone cut them and sew them shorter? Should I atatch another strap vertically from the bottom of the shoe over the top of my arch? They are Comme Il Fauts and I don’t want to ruin them when I tried them on they “stuck” to my feet perfectly but once I start dancing they unstick themselves.

I wish I had time to properly answer this question, but since I don’t I am going to throw it to anyone who is listening, and then maybe I will have time to come back and add my own thoughts!

BTW I deserve to be MIA, this is what my life currently looks like:

I’d SOOOOOO much rather be thinking about tango shoes!!!

(I’m sorry, I really didn’t intend for the title to rhyme, but now I can’t bring myself to change it …)

Hello! This is my introductory post on the main page of Tango Shoe Divas. I wrote a couple shoe reviews on my blog and was chastised for not sharing them here … so here I am! I am a budding shoe addict who came to tango from modern dance, where we don’t wear shoes at all. I blame tango for making me a shoe person.

I have a penchant for t-straps, low heels, dark colors, and flexible soles. In my slightly-over-a-year of dancing tango, I have collected six pairs of shoes: 2 Tango Wear, 1 Comme Il Faut, 1 Darcos, 1 Traspie and 1 pair of street shoes. I’ll start by gushing over my Tango Wear shoes.

(more…)

Continuing my theme of love hate relationship with buying shoes, today’s episode is about Tango-Wear. First the bad: mainly that we ordered on April 29th and we got them yesterday and one of the pairs from our order was not included (purposefully since we were starting to whine). 3-4 weeks shipping, my cute white hiney! Communication was a little wonky at times (several day email delays) but the people are always nice to deal with. They gave us a nice discount since we were ordering 6 pair and I of courseharangued them mercilessly with color combination changes, heel and platform changes… (and I feel like I got a lower heel than I asked for)

But in the end…

I LOOOOOOOVE my shoes.

You might recall that I narcissistically blogged (that IS redundant isn’t it) about designing this shoe all the way back in January (delayed gratification is good to keep me from buying 18 gazillion pairs of pretties…) The main goal was to try out the stiletto heel with a thin platform. So I was originally going to use “Atei” as the base (love the lines of this shoe and will probably get one more more…)

		I had trouble finding a color/heel combo that I liked. They unfortunately could not put the pretty avocado green heel onto other shoe models and didn’t have a metallic green stiletto. I didn’t want to bring any other colors (gold, black) into an already loud shoe. So in the end I used the “Green Diva” shoe as the base (so I could get the fun avocado colored heel).
Now to fix the color problem. I have a love hate relationship with metallics. They are beautiful and all, but they do NOT last (some of my favorite pairs have shown significant wear on the first day!). These shoes are not decorative. They work hard. I dance hard. I embellish, sweep, tap and trap. I do not want to be flinching every time I wear my pretties. So metallics are now for accent only.
So I asked for suede. I thought that this kind of dark, foresty suede would be nice with the avocado (and not show dirt as badly…) but we kind of went back and forth via email on several colors (did I mention that I make them work for their money?) So the shoes when they arrived were a bit of a surprise…

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I haven’t shared a shoe story in some time and so here goes. A shoe story of my favorite shoes- Neotango. No, they don’t have all the cool styles that Comme Il Faut has, but they do deign to make shoes at a heel height lower than 3″, and offer a tad more padding than some of the brands out there which makes me pretty happy.

I had been going to try some Delie shoes out, after hearing they had decent foot padding, and couldn’t get a reasonable match in sizing…so gave up. Then I saw these pretty shoes….

I had seen some on the Diva boutique website, but with heels too high and so I ignored them, then I found these through Felina shoes. They are suede (my favorite), style #113 with a sparkly lame’ woven heel cage and a very comfy and stable 6.5cm heel (though you can get them higher) that is slender and sexy but not a stiletto. I swear, it’s like wearing flats after torturing my feet for so long in heels over 3″ high! The front end is rounded, which is nice becasue you don’t get your toes squished together that way, but they are still a peep toe so your toes have some protection.

These are classy and dressy. I really love them but would also love to see Neotango release some more colorful styles in the 6.5cm height. The only current 6.5cm styles are red and black, with one purple metallic sandal in the style I don’t like becasue your toes fall out the side….and that’s my only beef with Neotango…otherwise…I actually prefer them to Comme Il Faut. The soles are very flexible, I can get a lower heel that isn’t ugly and is very stable, and they’ll last a good long time.

Browsing the Tara site after a long day of entirely too much talking (Yes, when I am brain dead I look at pictures of shoes to relax.)  I looked at some of the new, light colors that she is offering for summer.  I need some light color shoes, but I don’t know if I can deal with white/linen color.  I think I would cringe at every foot drag, sandwich, etc that a leader did.  But then I looked at her Coming Soon and there was “Calesita”


I have mixed feelings about this shoe. On the one hand I have been looking for a fun springy shoe and this would look great with a denim mini. And she says that this is a new flexible platform, which I find very interesting. But I am not in love with the buckles. I have a shoe with buckles across the toes and I get blisters under the buckles. I am afraid that these would be the same way…

I am sorely tempted though. Do the shoe divas have any opinions?

I don’t have time to do the full run down on Darcos from the last shoe order I made, I just want to share this picture that I saw today while trolling ebay… (yes, even now, at tax season, owing various governments more money than I care to think about, the siren song of tango shoes still calls my name) This picture highlights the problems with Darcos - In general I rather like the shoes. I’m into neutrals and light colors right now and the little bit of a “bling” heel keeps them from being too boring. And there the eye is drawn to the problem… Look at the angle of the heel on the shoe facing away from the camera. The shoe can barely maintain its own axis and says “Please fall down and break and ankle while trying to dance in me!”


None of the shoes that I have bought from Darcos have this, but inconsistency is their biggest problem and it is really dragging down their value when other things are quite good (Style most of the time, padding that is better than CiF most of the time…) I will have to save my BIG Darcos rant for when I have time to take pictures and really go off.

Ahhhhh.  The host did something a little bit wonky and in trying to fix it I made it 1000 times worse!  Hey, I am a dancer and a fluffy, fashonista, shoe addict, not a sys-admin or programmer.  But I am crossing my fingers, I seem to have fixed things (without prostrating myself before the various computer geeks that I know!).  I have 8 (!) installations of the Word Press software trying to fix things and I will hopefully not break anything else trying to clean up (not cleaning up is what caused the last catastrophe).  I know a lot more about the mysql storage structure now so hopefully any damage I do will be easily restored this time.  For all of you that have stuck with me, I’m glad you are still here and I have a couple of new rants and raves forthcoming, as soon as I know that everything is running right!

I don’t have any great shoe pr0n but I have a picture that one of my shoe sisters snapped of my shoe wall during a recent party… It’s blurry, but amusing…