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!

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

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…

(more…)

I am designing my “dream team”. Much like the male version of this pastime I have to draw from existing players, but I can make my own combination that is much better than anything in existence. I now own 7 (?!?!) pair of CiF and while I love them, the recent festival reminded me that I need to get back to my platform roots. After 45+ hours of tango I was down to two pair of shoes that I could stand to put on my feet, my bestest go-to pair that are beginning to be a bit worn but are as comfortable as 3.5 inch heels can be, and my platform Tara “Alma” Pair but Tara doesn’t have anything that I really need (need of course being a subjective term when you own 20 pair of tango shoes…) I am a bit in love with these, and I don’t have a plain pair of cherry red shoes… I was hoping that she would be at the festival, once they were on my feet I might have not let them go, plus I wanted to try the memory foam thing out in person…

It still could happen, but in the meantime… I have been on the hunt for green… A desperate quest in fact. Before tango, green was my favorite color and I never red. And we all know what happens when we start tango. Very quickly a normal, colorful closet becomes frighteningly bichromatic, black and red, practically a uniform for the nascent tango dancer. My tango shoe collection, which really started to grow in my sixth year of tango when I was SO over red, has no such problem – the most represented color (not lack of color – which would be black) is red, but it is closely followed by blue, purple and pink. I admit, I do have one pair of green shoes but I don’t love, either in color, or fit and balance. And I occasionally see a pair of CiF that are ok but nothing that makes me want to throw down $190.

So it is time to try something different. So lets play Fantasy Footwear. Courtesy of Tango Wear

First the model:
This part is easy. I’ve had my eye on this style for a long time (pretty much since the model came out). I have one friend who ordered them and went back for a second color. What seals the deal is that they will put a platform on them. Comfort plus the look of a stiletto would make this tanguera absolutely ecstatic.

Now for the hard part, finding the perfect color combination!

For the suede, the first picture is the ideal (CiF of course – I am tempted to buy that pair, as they are gorgeous, but I really, really need less 4″ heels!) and the second is a color from a pair of Tango Wear shoes. I have emailed the first picture to them to see if they have something closer to the CiF color (they are very nice to communicate with).

If they have a different suede, then I think I want to go with the more classic green metallic in the first picture. But their suede combined with the second metallic could be more unique… I also have an inquiry in about whether I can get a metallic stiletto to match. Yum!

So that is today’s episode of “Fantasy Footwear” (and I think I need a new category for this game!). Anyone want to vote? Hmmmm. I might have to work on poll functionality!