Zara red ballet flats, £19.99

When I first wrote about these Zara ballet flats, back in November of last year, I mentioned that there was a good chance of them finding their way into my basket along with my next Zara order. Well, it wasn’t quite the NEXT order (I’m actually considering just having all of my money transferred directly to Zara each month: it would save me a bit of time) but I did place a sneaky little order this week, and, as predicted, a pair of these found their way into it.

I’ve been on the lookout for the perfect red flats for ages now: they’re one of those shoe styles that I consider a wardrobe essential (for me, I mean), and my last pair have long since headed to the great shoe closet in the sky, leaving a red ballet flat-shaped hole on my shoe shelves. I would ideally have liked a pair with a pointed toe rather than a rounded one, but red pointed-toe flats have proved elusive this season (Or expensive: Boden have a great pair of red pointed flats right now, but I’m too cheap to spend £70 on them, so I’m holding out for a sale!), and with spring almost here I knew I’d be needing a pair sooner rather than later, so when I noticed these were starting to sell out in some sizes, I decided it was high time I bought myself a pair.

These were just £19.99, and although a new pair of flats doesn’t create quite the same buzz a fabulous new pair of heels does, I’m pretty happy with them. The cherry red colour is perfect, and looks great with denim, and the vamp is very low-cut, just the way I like it. The only issue I have is that they run just slightly larger than I would like: this is an issue I always seem to have with flats – they tend to be either slightly too big, or slightly too small on me – but they’re definitely wearable, particularly given that I’ll mostly be wearing them on days when I plan to do a lot of walking, which can make the feet swell a little. I can tell that the size down would’ve been far too small, so if I do have an issue, I can always add an insole to make the fit a little more snug.

On the subject of flat shoes: when I wrote about my new shoe storage shelves last year, I got quite a few questions about where I store my flats, so here’s a quick look :

As you can see, the flats have their own shelf in my dressing room, directly opposite the shoe wall. That shelf is fairly deep, so there’s a second row of flats behind the ones you can see here, which is enough to store all of them. I also have another two of those shelves in the room which hold the rest of the shoe collection – or the ones which don’t fit onto the shelves, anyway. I’m hoping that should be more than enough storage for now, but there’s also space underneath those shelves, so you never know!