Cat in Heels

Once upon a time I walked everywhere in heels. And I mean everywhere. I would walk miles in platforms or 5 inch stilettos. Sometimes 5 inch platform stilettos. I took the bus and train in heels. I wore heels in rain, snow, sleet, day, night. If needed I could run in heels. More than a couple times I fell asleep still wearing heels. In my late 20's I slowly started favoring shorter or thicker heels heels when I knew walking was going to be a thing. Then I found myself worrying about things like the pitch of the shoe, the level of the platform or lack thereof and whether or not my foot slid forward after hours of wear. Slowly I found myself favoring certain styles and spending more money on one good pair of heels than two or three shitty ones. Slowly I found a cobbler I love and started worrying about what kind of materials were used to make my shoes and what type on insole they have. Slowly I was getting older. Under my desk used to be empty. Now it's full of shoe...

I love shoes. It turns out buying them for my girls is as fun as when I buy them for myself. I am also already dreading the day when they get an opinion and stop letting me pick out the ones I like best. My girls only had gym shoes, which worked great this spring, but I needed to get them ready for summer, so a few weeks ago we piled into the car, drove to the mall, piled out (seriously do you have any idea what goes into taking twins to a mall?) and wandered into the nearest mall. The new shoes getting ready to jump into action at the park. Of course the store I wanted to go to was on the opposite side of where I came in, so we schlepped across the mall with all the people stopping to point, yelling out things like “Are they twins?” and “Oh my god, how do you do it?” (double stroller people) and went to Stride Rite . Lucky me they were having a sale on sandals, but of course only a limited selection. We picked out one style for both girls, and then literally as I am being ru...

Most women have a stash of shoes in various places. Drawers at the office, the trunk or backseat of the car, or all of the above. We have this because our needs are constantly changing. I walk almost a mile from the train to the office. I can’t do that in the heels I’ll wear all day. Plus all that walking can’t be good for the heels (or my feet in the heels).  Then there’s the after dinner drinks, lunch that you’re walking to but is still professional so you want heels, weekends and time chasing kids, or going out on the town. Never mind that we need shoes in different colors or styles, the main reason we hoard shoes in a million places is because one height doesn’t work for everything. You can’t walk a mile in stilettos twice a day for years, just like you can’t wear a low heeled oxford with a dress on a date night. This constant changing is how we end up with drawers full of shoes scattered throughout the various Heels with flames. Love this. places we live our lives like s...

There’s life changers that are really obvious and turn your entire life on its ear (like the day I came home with twins), and then there are the subtle changes that you don’t really notice until you have some reason to look back. At that point it sometimes makes you wonder “Who am I?” The other day I was texting with a friend and we were discussing work, jobs, next steps and the path that got us there. We've been friends since we were about 15, moved to the city around the same time, spent our 20s putting in 50+ hours a week at the office, trying to establish ourselves in careers, and spent weekends bar hopping, drinking too much and making some questionable decisions. Eventually we started spending weekends in, got married (me, not him), moved, got new jobs, kept working a million hours a week (does that stop?), had twins (me again) and once in a while we manage to not have meetings on the same day and we meet for lunch. Closet vomit. I seriously need to get this under contr...

Anyone who has ever had a baby knows that it takes some time to get back to “normal.” And by time I mean I’m not entirely sure this is ever actually going to happen. Aside from the part where your body is pushed to physical limits you didn’t know were possible, there’s that whole weight gain thing.  If you’re one of those horrid women who bounced back in like a week without any changes, then screw you. Stop reading now and go somewhere and gloat. We are not friends. For the rest of you who are still with me on this quest to yoga my ass back in shape (seriously, what happened to my ass?) then welcome. You get it. In my total insolence and hatred of my new post-baby body I have been refusing to buy new clothes. I don’t like this new size and am determined to not stay here forever, therefore there’s no point in investing in clothes. As a result I am wearing the same 6 outfits all the time, none of which are quite my pre-pregnancy style. Luckily, I have my shoes. The magic ...

Since having the twins four months ago I’ve been busy. I’d love to blame that on why I haven’t blogged a lot too, but the truth is that since they were born I have struggled with my blog identity. How is Cat in Heels still the same Cat when she can’t go out anymore. What kind of adventures do my shoes have now? I go to work, and come home, and then play with babies (and by play I mean breastfeed with a little playing) until they go to bed. Then I say a prayer no one wakes up in the middle of the night so I can actually sleep and stay up too late watching movies with the husband. New shoes to fit my new, bigger feet. From where I was sitting the glamor of what was probably a pretty boring life to begin with, was gone.  Now I’m a woman with twin babies, who works full time, doesn’t sleep and has no clothes because I refuse to shop for my current post-postpartum body. Finally I came to the conclusion that you, dear reader, are here not necessarily because I talked about shoes,...

Yeah, I totally fell off the grid for the last few weeks. But I swear I had a good excuse. I was busy having babies. Ok, not the whole time, but I went into labor on Tuesday, March 18 and delivered two healthy girls mid-morning by cesarean section. Then there was the subsequent hospital stay, getting home and being totally overwhelmed. Crying jags, hormone issues, sleepless nights... Actually that's all still continuing, and probably will for a while. Luckily we have managed to get some kind of schedule established, and I'm thinking that furiously blogging between feedings is really the way to go right now. Meet Delilah and Scarlett. Now that I'm not pregnant for the first time in nine months, it's also time to dig through my closet and find out what happened to my wardrobe. I'm not quite in my own pants just yet (three weeks is a bit ambitious), but I can fit into some of my looser clothes, have lost a lot of the baby weight, and have managed to wear heeled...

Right now it's all the rage for brands to team up with celebrities for a special line of something.  Kristin Cavallari has a deal with Chinese Laundry for heels, Madonna brought Material Girl Nice lips, but she's hardly the first to do a bold lip. exclusively to Macy's, the new SJP line is only at Nordstrom, and Gwen Stefani unveiled her GX shoes only through ShoeDazzle .  No stranger to the celebrity lines, MAC has recently announced the celebrity face of their new partnership for the next round of limited edition cosmetics. And seriously I couldn't be more disappointed.  Oh, you thought this was going to be positive and about shoes. Sorry. It's about my second favorite love, cosmetics. Especially MAC, to which I am hopelessly devoted.  This summer MAC releases a line with songstress, and possible one-hit-wonder, Lorde.  I'll give you a minute to let that soak in.  The girl who looks like she's wearing drugstore lipstick that doe...

Apparently in the 1980s, our present seemed so far away they felt they could wildly speculate about what the future would hold. Now here we are in the Back to the Future II years and totally lacking in hover boards, flying cars and my trash an doesn't talk to me. Probably a good thing on the talking trash can.  Now with self lacing technology. One thing that has been coveted by many all these years are Marty McFly's gym shoes from 2015. A couple years ago Nike actually made that happen, and sold a 1,500 pairs they made to people with lots of money who were also gym shoe fanatics and Back to the Future fans. One disappointment was that the shoes didn't self lace and you actually had to do it yourself. Now  Nike announced  they are fixing that and will have a self lacing shoe out by 2015.  I have to wonder how long they've been sitting on his patent, hoping they can make it work.  While I personally don't care about gym shoes all that much,...

I now own flats. Two pair to be precise. One pair of fab Dolce Vita loafers with leopard tassels, and a pair of pointy-toe, studded flats. The most amazing part of these purchases? I intend to wear them. Like all day. Cat in Heels will soon need to transition to Cat in Flats. No, I have not had some kid of irreparable foot damage, hurt my knee again, or inexplicably decided to shun my heels forever. It's because I am pregnant...with twins. All my recent shoe purchases. All in black. I need to get a little color going here.  You can let that sink in for a moment. I've had 15 weeks to get used to it. That was after the initial shock of it all, which still hasn't fully worn off. Being pregnant is also the reason I haven't been posting as much. I'm usually a night owl and do most of my writing and posting at night. Instead I've been eating dinner and falling asleep on the couch, leaving my husband sitting and wondering what the hell to do with his even...

Halloween is right around the corner, which means it's a great excuse to wear some amazing clothes, and I don't mean costumes. While Halloween used to be all about costumes, now it's graduated to other things. There are those lame t-shirts that flip up and show everyone your belly and a picture of a werewolf face. There's the shirts or dresses that have a skeleton on them...and then there's the shoes. Which are the clothes made for Halloween that don't suck. I would wear these all the time.  Charlotte Olympia has released an entire Halloween collection (because she has a collection for every holiday), and it's awesome. She has added fangs to her classic kitty loafers, put bats all over the Dolly island platform to create the Midnight Dolly , has a pair of pumpkin loafers, a pumpkin purse, bat clutch, and the absolutely amazing purple Nocturna l sandal with an island platform, ankle strap and a bat on the toe. More shoes should have bats. I would s...

Wearing tights isn't always practical, and sometimes it's not the look you want. Thanks to Keysocks for the awesome package.  I love heels with pants, including jeans and dress pants, but depending on the weather, or the fit of the shoe, nylons, knee highs or trouser socks can ruin the look. Like most great inventions, Keysocks were born of necessity when fashion and function were in conflict. Now a family business, the sisters who make Keysocks have managed to combine fashion and function, and actually make it work. Recently I received a couple pairs of Keysocks . Knee-high height they are cut out across the top of the foot, making them perfect for wearing with heels, flats or loafers when you need a sock but don't want the look. You can't see them... I admit to being skeptical about the fit. I was worried they would shift, come off my toes and bunch up under my foot, or some other thing. Instead they were perfect. I wore them for hours and they staye...

I make fun of stuff all the time. Some say it’s because I’m a cynic, some say it’s because I’m a bitch. I personally think I’m a realist, and I really don’t look at it as making fun of things, so much as simply telling people what I think. Wellrox Making fun of something would imply I’m being mean for sport, or being funny, neither of which are really things I do. A few months ago I wrote a post all about these really awful sandals called Wellrox, which look kind of like Birkenstocks, but they have thong things that go between all your toes. So if Cuthulu and Birkenstock had a sandal baby and put a flower on it, then it would be these sandals.  Of course I overlooked all the important things about how they’re good for your feet, and correct your gait and blah, blah, blah, and I focused on the aesthetics (or lack thereof). You can imagine how floored I was when a Wellrox representative reached out to me and said they wanted me to try their sandals, and they were pre...

Much ado has been made of Miley Cyrus twerking all over Robin Thicke and being all provocative, wearing latex underpants, how her butt is flat, whether she has an eating disorder or not, and all kinds of other crazy nonsense. I would like to get past her Night at the Roxbury moment to Blurred Lines, ignore her lousy song and This is all kinds of awkward.  lack of dancing, that weird furry themed number, and her attempt to shock people, and instead focus on her shoes. The girl paired creepers with latex. I have nothing against creepers or latex. They both have their time and place, and can look great if worn appropriately. But not together. In fact, I’m pretty sure the entire latex wearing fetish community all gasped and clutched their pearls when they saw her ill-fitting bikini thing (and that color) and creepers. Let me tell you what’s not sexy. Dancing around in a pair of big, clunky shoes and no pants. Creepers are great when paired with jeans. If you’re...

Robin Thicke is so damn hot that when he’s around women’s clothes just fly off. Or at least that’s what it seems if you watch his extremely NSFW video for the hit song “Blurred The clear vinyl is kind of cool.  Lines” (and a woman at work who saw him live said that's pretty true). There are two versions of the video (as I’m sure everyone now knows), and while one of them has girls prancing around in white outfits, the second one has them stripped down to their thong panties and prancing around. I would like to call bullshit and have a word with the video’s stylist. First, clothes or no clothes, the shoes these women are wearing are atrocious. They’re all channeling Baby Spice and the laste ‘90s with chunky platform gym shoes that were a bad idea back then. They’re also a really, really bad idea when you’re naked. If you’re going to wear shoes with lingerie, please make sure it’s a pair of stilettos. (Seriously, why am I explaining this?) They don’t have to have platforms or be ...

When it comes to kids, especially girls, getting into more adult things like makeup, often people ask These are for children. “How young is too young?” Now apparently we find ourselves asking that about heels. Are heels OK for a child to wear? As soon as this question comes up, people automatically talk about Suri Cruise and her high heeled shoes. I would like to take a moment and point out that Suri isn’t a normal child, and nothing she does, now or ever, should be considered normal. The child of an arguably insane father and a mother who only recently started looking like an adult (seriously she looked 16 until she was like 30), the kid was born into more money than God and will never be “normal.” Let’s not use Hollywood’s children as a fashion barometer. That’s a really slippery slope. I know adults who won't wear wedges this high.  Regardless of whether or not heels on a child who only recently stopped crapping their pants seems somewhat strange to me. ...

Every so often a designer does something so awesome and fantastic, that you are reminded that fashion is not just a way to not be naked. It is art. We should have more clothes with Muppets on them. Iris Van Herpen took haute couture to a level rarely seen at the Paris shows recently, and showed an entire collection that was three dimensional and made me think of Cthulhu. The actual theme was nature, and she was showing how wild nature is. I've decided it's so damn wild it actually started to summon bits of Hell. Let me assure you I mean this in the best way possible and clothing reminding me of literature is a compliment. The fact that it reminds me of H.P. Lovecraft literature is simply a bonus. One dress even went all Dark Crystal and I'm pretty sure there were the heads of skeksis on it, and it may have been made from feathers, or Muppets. I'm not sure which. If I could afford couture I would wear the hell out of that dress. In love! The shoes for...

My husband recently sent me an article from Cracked on " The 6 Most WTF Medical Procedures that Actually Exist ." When I was a kid I wanted to be able to change heads.  This couldn't possibly be more awesome because Cracked makes me laugh and I am oddly obsessed with plastic surgery. Not for myself (I've never had anything done), but for others. Seriously, how can there be anything more grotesquely fascinating than Kenny Rogers new face, or the fact that Mombi can now be real with head transplants? Well, there's the apparently rampant problem of toebesity. That would be fat-toes, which you can have made skinnier. You know, so you don't have fat little toes ruining your good looking shoes. This condition, which is actually called portmanteau, can be fixed by paying a surgeon to take off bits of bone and skin to make your toes skinnier. You didn't need that silly bone anyway. My fat little toes don't need surgery.  As someone with sh...

The Fourth of July is the perfect time to show your patriotism and rock the red, white and blue. Available on Gilt Unless of course, you’re one of my many readers from another country, at which point this date holds no significance at all except that you can’t reach anyone in the U.S. for business purposes.  Regardless, it’s a good color combination, and should be worn as much as possible, even if your flag is orange and blue (no idea who that would be) and the 4 th  is nothing other than Thursday (and drunk American day).  It’s also a day for BBQs, beer, fireworks (because booze and blowing shit up is an awesome combo) and being outside and hoping it doesn’t rain. All that means is that it’s really, really important to wear semi-sensible shoes that don’t sink into the grass, and that you can move fast enough in to get out of the way of a bottle rocket that mysteriously went sideways instead of up. My stand by-recommendation for all kinds of summer a...

Suede lips and suede heels The one thing that I have almost as many of as shoes is lipstick. I have all kinds of colors and shades, most of them with matching liners, and then there's a rather significant number of glosses as well. Obsession with shoes and lipstick must go together. And I'm not the only one who thinks so.  Sophia Webster has teamed up with Revlon and created a line of lipstick-inspired heels.  How awesome is this?  The collection goes with Revlon Color Stay Ultimate Suede lipstick, and is all reds and pinks with slick and suede textures. Some of the heels even have lip marks all over them.  My personal favorite shade Pretty sure I need all of these. Then I can buy the matching lipstick and look like the most put together person ever. Which will be a great because usually I'm halfway between put together and hot mess.  How can you go wrong? Matching shoes and lipstick. This is brilliant. I hope every designer...