Shoe challenge 2012: the aftermath

First of all, happy New Year dudes! May 2013 surprise you, be full of joy, love and laughter, and may you scratch at least one thing off your bucket list. I sure will. The boy gifted me a sky dive jump for my birthday in the summer, so I’m sure I’ll be able to cross that one off at least. I won’t do the usual recap, but I do want to discuss the official end of my shoe challenge. One year, 125 pairs of shoes saved. But not all survived. Just like last year, I let go of quite a few pairs, even after already saving them. Sometimes I like to go hard on myself.

So what did I learn this year? For one thing, that if I love something, I like really love it. In fact, when I’ve found something I adore, I just can’t get enough of it. If 2011 was the year which cradled my obsession for Vivienne Westwood’s Lady Dragon pumps, 2012 was definitely the year of Sam Edelman shoes. This year’s challenge featured no less than seven pairs! Three pairs of Lorissas (black, yellow and fuchsia), two pairs of Lornas and two pairs of sandals (Exie in black and Gwyneths in silver).

Another 2012 favourite: Karen Millen dresses. And I’m leaving at least three or four out of this little selection, simply because I haven’t gotten around to wearing all my new ones. Most of all, I’ve grown to love the more casual dresses. The cocktail ones are gorgeous of course, but tend to stay mainly inside my closet, and that’s truly a shame for such beauties. The white, the black (I’m in love with the scalloped texture!) and the red.

Another thing I’ve noticed while going through my sartorial choice of the past nine years, is the amount of colour and prints, as well as my increasing love for retro styles. These babies will get a lot of wear year-round: my hot dog dress from Folter (buy here), my Jessica dress in Happy Valley print from Bernie Dexter (buy here) and my Hell Bunny Mexico print dress (buy here). With all those retro frocks, it was time to finally buy a petticoat, and I can happily say that I ordered another one in pink today. Of course, I also love all three pairs of shoes. In fact, I love the black “Bree” courts from Schuh so much, that I’ve since bought them in red as well.

I also did a lot of eBaying this year, which is why I managed to cross off a lot of Kurt Geiger and Carvela shoes of my wishlist. Obviously there was also my rather drastic hair cut, and the arrival of my (finally) fully functional shoe room. In order to stay organised, shoes were thrown out, shoes were saved, other shoes were thrown out even after they were saved, (a lot of) new shoes were purchased and favourites were chosen. Out of 125 shoes rescued, only 120 were still standing at the end. Not to mention all the shoes that I excluded before the challenge. A lot of those were the ones that got saved near the very end of last year’s challenge, so I should’ve known already. In total about 20 pairs got dumped, but I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t busy trying to replace them with other beauties.

And to wrap things up: my favourite looks from this year’s shoe challenge. I guess my style is as simple as I’ve always thought: dress, belt, cardigan, dressed! Don’t worry, all these shoes are still safe and sound!