Musings on a Shoe

Draft:

Earlier Drafts:
I wore this skirt for my glasses confession.

Composition:
white eyelet skirt (Express)
green t-shirt (Target)
green ruffled t-strap wedges (Steve Madden)

Usage:
After reading Liz and Anne-Marie's posts on outfits that epitomized their personal style aesthetic, I planned to post mine today.  However, I'm cat-sitting, and in my haphazard packing spree, I neglected to bring the necessary skirt with me.  So I had to move my Tuesday outfit up a day, and I'll take some pictures of the quintessential Katie outfit once I've gone home to retrieve the missing piece of my personal style puzzle.

I am in love with this t-shirt.  It's stretchy enough to be super comfortable but fitted enough to hug the body in all the right places.  And at ~$7 it's pretty unbeatable.  But the real discussion point of this outfit is (what else?) the shoes. 

I came across these Steve Madden wedges at a discount shoe store near my house, where I got them for $20.  I love cheap shoe stores - think: Payless - because though you may have to wade through the muck, when you find something great, you get it very cheap.  I often find shoes for $20 or less, and the last time I paid more than $30 for shoes was when I bought the heels featured in this post, over five months ago.  I was willing to pay more for them because I had been looking for a good pair of patent leather Mary Janes, and these were 50% off.  Yes, there is something to be said for investing in quality, but frankly as a grad student, I'd rather get six pairs of cheap, cute shoes than one pair of really nice ones, which would still probably cost me more.

These wedges came in a multitude of colors, from this apple green to a deep raspberry to candy apple red to (insert next food related color) and back around to a basic black.  I don't have green shoes, so I thought I'd take these for a spin.  I've found that when shoes come in bright colors and neutral colors, I'm almost always drawn to the colorful ones rather than the safer neutrals.  This means that while I could make a rainbow from my shoe collection, I am lacking in basic shoes.  Sure, I have a set of basic pumps and slingbacks in both brown and black, but they're relatively old, and I could really use some more neutral variety.

Prompts:

• Do you prefer variety (six cheap pairs of shoes) or quality (one nice pair of shoes)?  Does it change if we're talking about clothes rather than shoes?  What about jewelry?
• Are you attracted to colorful footwear or do you gravitate toward neutral shoes?