Tango Shoe Divas

Here is my long awaited post. I will try to keep it short (for me) on words and sweet…

I joined Greta Flora’s Facebook group, where they have a running list of limited edition shoes they have available and saw a really great pair of shoes that I instantly loved.

These were the shoes I saw:

I saw them about 2 days before I got my first pair of Greta’s (in October) and as soon as I saw that the size was right, I wrote to find out if they were still available. They were not, but the shoes I got from Kathleen were great. Greta Flora is a respectable company…so I asked if they could make another pair for me, in a slightly lower heel. They said yes.

After almost 3 months of waiting, this is what arrived at my doorstep…

And if I loved the UT Longhorns (I hate football), and orange patent leather, these would be great but did I mention just ow much extra work I had to do to save up for these???

They do fit, and are very well made. The flower is HUGE (but not the red suede I loved on the other pair)…and they do have the saffron foot bed and straps I wanted…but all that other PUMPKIN color…OYE!

So, I love Greta Flora. They couldn’t even make all orange look truly horrible. I will still buy their shoes (from places I can return to). But I am seriously unhappy that they didn’t tell me they were out of the reddish reptile material for the heel….

Now what to do? Tell me readers…do I leave them alone, and glory in their orange-ness?

Do I make some effort to at least change the flower color? (Patent can’t be changed.)

Stone the back and flower with Swarovski?

Combination of any of those?

Comment away!

You may remember these shoes from TangoWear:

You may also remember I really didn’t like them and they were a little big on me.

My feet widened out (the joy of being yet another year older and wearing Dansko’s all the time) and now they fit me much better.

I still hated the color choice I picked. Too monotone! That was my mistake.
I tried several things and finally got desperate.

Dye didn’t work on the leather part. I wasn’t going to blow any cash dying the suede black and so I went and got some glitter and glue. Now they have a sheer coat of blue green irridescent glitter on the heel, piping and strap. I like them better now. (but they’ll need and extra coat on the heels, I think.)

When you got a lemon, you make lemonade.

I got these pony print shoes a couple of months ago from Jennifer at Maleva shoes. Luckily, I got to go over and try them on at her place to find out if they’d really fit before I bought them. Yes, indeed, they fit and were comfortable…but…she had JUST gotten new models of Comme Il Faut in when I arrived and there were these fabulous shoes with little lace frou-frou over the peep-toe and tiny little pom-poms on the slingback. They were awesome! But they had a 3.5″ heel, which I can’t wear. So…I got the ones I originally intended..the velvet pony print shoes…but I “had a plan”.

 I would find some nice lacy bits and see what I could do since I had been suddenly overcome with “lace envy”.

 I found what I needed at a local fabric store. In fact, it was even BETTER than what I thought I’d have to deal with. An organze ruffle on both edges of a stretchy velvet ribbon. Perfect!

 I set about sewing my very own special trim on to the peep toe of my pony print shoes. It really gives them that little bit of extra black on the front that I felt they needed…plus the extra little bit of femininity of the organza is what I love.

 A very happy ending…

Before:

And after…over the top??? Well- at least I didn’t try to fnd any pom-poms for them.

Tango Wear – “Osscira” – $69 (on sale) + $12 shipping – Black and Silver – Platform – 3 3/8 inch “Thin Flare” heel – ordered 8/19/06 – received 10/10/06

From the picture on the website (shown in red and black below) I thought that this shoe would be a lot more delicate. I also ordered it with a “Thin Straight” heel and I am pretty sure that this is a “Thin Flare” heel. It is the identical heel to my Uva shoes that I ordered at the same time. The Uva I requested with the “Thin Flare” so one of them came with the wrong heel, and I think it is this pair. The sizing on these shoes was pretty accurate (though they fussed at me about my measurements and I had to tell them – “Just make them a 7.5, it’ll be fine.”)

I just couldn’t wear these shoes. The straight cut across my foot made the front of my foot look about as puffy as they have looked since I was pregnant. Then the ankle strap made my calves look fat, and was uncomfortable to boot. I wish I had a “before” picture of just how off they looked when I put them on. I tried a couple of times to wear them, but they just made my feet feel not pretty… Not a good thing for a Tango Shoe Diva. So these shoes hung on my Shoe Wall for 6 months, would occasionally get put in my shoe bag and go for a ride to a milonga, but there they would stay until they were returned to the Wall.

It was a waste of a good pair of shoes that were otherwise ok and pretty comfortable. I messed around with them for a while, with some ribbons and such, and formulated a plan. I took them to a local shoe repair place that had come highly recommended from another Tango Shoe Diva. I didn’t like him as much as she did, but that is a whole different story. I got a little bit of last minute inspiration and explained to him what I wanted. He said $10 and two days. I wore them for the first time last night and I was pretty pleased with the results. Do you see the difference?

I had him add the T-strap. It pulls the ankle strap down from the crease of my ankle enough that it is way more comfortable. And the strap breaks up the straight line so that the front of my foot doesn’t look nearly so broad and puffy. The last minute inspiration was to attach the T-strap through one of the cut outs. Even though the leather wasn’t a perfect match, attaching the loop this way made it look more unified. They are quite comfortable now and much more attractive. I wish the shoe man’s other work had been as competent (the stitching isn’t that straight, but it is much more obvious in the pictures because of the flash).