Asked me a question on Formspring? Well, here are the answers!

 Q: What’s your opinion on toes that ‘hang ten’ over summer sandals/peep toes? I’ve been noticing it a lot (on other people) this summer and I think it looks pretty bad. Why do you think it happens?

“Hang ten!” I’ve never heard that expression before – I love it! (The expression, I mean, not the look – I agree that it doesn’t look great.)

I think it happens either with poorly fitting shoes, or sometimes with strappy sandals which don’t do enough to hold the foot in place, and allow it to slip forward. An easy way to fix it would be to use something like Foot Petals, or some other kind of insole, to give the foot a bit more traction and stop it slipping forward.

Q: What size shoes do u wear?

In most shoes I wear a UK size 4 (European 37), although I have some size 3s and some size 5s – either my feet keep changing size, or shoe-sizing is becoming more random! In the US, about a 6.5 usually.

When trying on shoes, do you go barefoot or do you find it “icky” putting your feet where dozens of other people have?

I find it a bit icky (contrary to what some of the foot fetishists who write to me seem to think, I’m not all that keen on feet!), but I just try not to think about it. Most shoe shops have sets of those little pop socks which you can borrow, though, although I’m not sure those are much better than shoes other people have been trying on, so if I’m shopping specifically for shoes, I’ll sometimes stick a pair of my own into my bag.

I really love your blog! But could you explain how you actually earn money from it?

I earn money from running adverts on the site, which we get paid for.

Any tips for wearing heels for a girl who walks (almost) everywhere? I have stacks of pretty shoes and never wear them for fear of blisters or ruining them. I always tend to catch a heel in a grate or between cobblestones and scratch them (or worse).

I posted some tips on avoiding blisters here, but they’re really caused by ill-fitting shoes rather than by the height of the heel, so if the shoes fit properly, you shouldn’t get blisters.

As far as ruining stiletto heels go, you can buy heel stoppers to go on the end of the heels while you’re walking – they stop them slipping between cracks in pavements, sinking into gaps etc, although they do look a little odd! My only other tip there is to find a good cobbler who can nurse the heels back to life.

The other option, of course, is a high wedge heel – much more comfortable to wear and less chance of damage!

Got a question? You can ask it here, or in the box in the sidebar!

I’ve been getting quite a few requests for shoe-related help recently, so I’ve decided to open up my Formspring account again, to give people an easier way to ask their questions.

If you have a shoe-related query, feel free to type it into the box below (or the one that’s taken up residence in the sidebar). Remember, in order for me to be able to help you, the more specific your question is, the better: for instance, I’ll need to know which country you live in (so I don’t suggest shoes that can’t be shipped to you), what kind of budget you have (so I don’t just go directly to ChristianLouboutin.com and work from there), and what kind of heel-height you’re looking for (I love heels, but if you can’t walk in them, I need to know so I’m not searching for 5″ stilettos!).

Fire away – I will do my best to answer if I possibly can!

Emily writes:

Dear Shoeperwoman,

I’m in a bit of a pickle. I purchased these shoes the other day from Marks and Spencer, but am now unsure as to whether to keep or return them. I’m like them, but don’t know whether they’ll be too quirky to be a versatile addition to my shoe collection. What do you think?

Many thanks 

Emily

*   *   *

I probably shouldn’t be billing this post as a “To the Rescue”, because I really think this is a personal taste/style thing, and that only you can really know how much use you’ll get out of a certain item. I can tell you that, for me, these probably wouldn’t get a lot of use, because they wouldn’t work well with my personal style, but without knowing what kind of look you tend to go for, and what’s in your closet, it’s hard to know how well they’d work for you.

In this case, I think the best I can do (other than asking for the opinions of my lovely readers, of course) is to tell you how I decide whether to buy or not to buy a pair of shoes. Actually, my Shoe Challenge has really changed the way I shop for shoes. These days, I’m much more likely to deliberate over the purchase, and to ask myself how often I’ll realistically get to wear the shoes in question. For this reason, many pairs of beautiful shoes that I’d normally have purchased in the blink of an eye have been left on the shelf, because I just know I wouldn’t ever get round to wearing them.

These days I tend to ask myself two questions before making a purchase:

1. Does it make my heart flutter?

You all know what I mean by this: every so often you’ll walk into a store (or click onto a website), see a particular item and just think “YES. THAT. MUST. HAVE.” It’s the shoe that’s perfect in every way: as soon as you see it, you know you love it, and as you’re walking to the register to pay for it, you’re already thinking “I could wear these with my…” or “These will be perfect for that…” These shoes are always worth buying (assuming they’re within your budget), even if you don’t instantly know when and how you’ll wear them, purely because if you don’t buy them, you’ll regret it. And you’ll regret it even more when you go back the next week and discover they’re sold out in your size. Then you’ll find yourself paying three times full retail for them on eBay, because you lay awake thinking about those shoes and berating yourself for not just buying them when you had the chance.

(I’m speaking totally hypothetically, here, by the way. I mean, it’s not like that has actually happened to me. Ahem.)

In other words: BUY THE SHOES.

2. Will I wear them all the time?

At least once a year, I buy a pair of totally plain, gold leather ballet flats, and often a pair of totally plain black ones, too. Gold ballet flats don’t make my heart flutter. Neither do black ones. They don’t rock my world. I buy a pair every year (or sometimes more often), though, because I wear those shoes until they, quite literally, fall apart. They’re not fun, but damn, they’re useful, so when I see them, I buy them (You’d think it would be easy to find the perfect pair of gold ballet flats, but you would be wrong…) because I know that even if I don’t need them rightthatverysecond, I will need them soon.

This is the criteria by which I buy shoes (and most other things, now I come to think of it).  To answer Emily’s question, it doesn’t sound like the shoes in question fall into either of these categories, so my instinct would be to say “return”, but as I said, only YOU can know how much use you’ll get out of them.

What does everyone else think? Should Emily keep or return the shoes?

A question has flooded in from a reader! Which is great because, you know, I love questions. This one comes from Daisy, who writes:

“Hey Amber/Shoeperwoman,

First of all, I LOVE your blog. I have become addicted to it and actively try to resist my shoe shopping urges by being a good girl and just looking at pretty shoes on your website. Usually several times a day, the urge is STRONG.

But, of course, I do own tons of shoes and I have a pressing emergency. How do you keep your heels undamaged? Maybe it’s just the Belgian pavement, but I always manage to ruin the back of my heels. Do you have any tips or tricks to keep them nice and new looking? (I noticed the state of your gorgeous red Matalan shoes, your heels still look brand new)

Thanks, and bye!

Daisy.”

Daisy, I feel your pain. Those red heels you mention? Total fluke. And probably not a situation that will continue for too much longer.  I, you see, am the Queen of Clumsy. If there is a crack in the pavement, my heel will be stuck in it. If there’s a particularly muddy patch of grass, just ripe for sinking into, that is the patch of grass I will stand on. So I know ALL about heels getting ruined, and I have two solutions for this problem, although I’m hoping some of my readers may be able to offer up some more.

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