Carnivale of Couture

Style Tribe is hosting this week's Carnivale of Couture:

"I want to celebrate our role as bloggers. What distinguishes us from fashion press is our lack of limits: we can express as we please, and our unique personalities make us more interesting rather than less professional. To that end, I want to invite everyone to write about their most significant fashion purchase. Not the most expensive or most exciting, but the one that was somehow pivotal, or meaningful to you personally."

My most significant fashion purchase are these Prada ballet flats. This is not my most expensive pair of shoes or fashion purchase. I got these shoes to just make me happy. (Sure that can be said for all of my purchases.) So why was this significant?

This was back in 2002, in the days after the whole dot com crash of 2001. I was one of the survivors (whether I liked it or not) of a bankrupt agency from which the remains were sold to a new one. A few thousand people in different offices around the Bay Area were whittled down and consolidated to a mere 150 all in San Francisco. Things were hard and I didn't shop much in case I lost my job as well as the fact we were working so hard in scaled down teams I didn't have time. There was just a dark mood all around San Francisco.

Around that spring, we all got a bonus of $500 because a minor profit was made. Not a lot of money, but it signified a turning point. Things were better. I wanted to celebrate. I needed to feel fashion, feel like a girl, feel like myself again. Sometimes after a really depressing week at work my friend and co-worker Olivia and I would just walk through the shoe department at Neiman Marcus to feel better. (Another key "feel good" place was Sephora.) I had been eyeing these beautiful Prada flats with a unique bow/buckle detail. A couple weeks later when we got our bonus, I headed straight back to Neimans and bought the $220 Prada flats.

Four years later I still have them. Not only do I wear them practically all the time, they are my most comfortable pair of shoes. Sure they may be a tiny bit scuffed, but these shoes will always make me feel happy and safe.

UPDATE 3/29: Merci beaucoup Angela Gunn of USA Today's Tech_Space for doing a write up on this!

Comments

[karini]

i had a tough week of studnet teaching so one friday i was looking through in style mag and saw these payless shoe store cuties. they aren't prada but i like them anyway and dammit they make me happy. they actually look cuter in person...

http://www.payless.com/Catalog/ProductDetail.aspx?&TLC=Womens&SLC=WomensSandals&BLC=WomensSandalsTrendy&Width=Regular&DescriptiveColor=Orange&ItemCode=53896&LotNumber=046280&Type=Adult&cm_id=coloritemgraphic

[olivia]

marc jacobs "mouse" flats. with the same bonus check you got. hahahaha.

[Ms. Glaze]

A Georgia Armani camel color long coat. I tried it on in the Armani store in London, looked at myself in the mirror, and caught a glimpse of a whole new me – tall, elegant, sophisticated. I then looked at the price tag and almost coughed up a lung. 500 pounds– not possible on a school teacher's salary. I reluctantly started to put it back on the rack when a sales guy grabbed the coat and grabbed me by the wrist and brought us both to the cash register. He cut the price by 2/3's, smiled, and asked for my credit card.

That was four years ago and I still feel like a million bucks in it!

Bisous,
Ms. Glaze

[Maria Palma]

I still have yet to find those dreamy pair of shoes (I'm more of a purse gal), but I can just imagine how good it feels to be in them :)