Buy the shoe and we’ll throw in the girl…
I was going to tell you about my attitude towards footwear. The LDR wears expensive running shoes. He needs the most expensive running shoes known to mankind because he needs support: he is, after all, an LDR. With the physique of a decathlete. And he runs a lot – he’s the man who can outrun his own… no… that would be unkind. I do not begrudge him the shoes - running makes him happy. He easily gets through four to five pairs a year. The situation in our household is that the LDR’s shoe expenditure, spread across a calendar year, mostly exceeds mine. Alas, this does not steer me towards frugality. I have to outdo him; if I don’t, it has not been a good year. He does not encourage me not to outspend him. Because the ‘less is more’ mantra is second nature to me, I do my very best to spend more on less. Shoe shopping is usually planned and rarely spontaneous. It’s an occasion. I have never been the woman who feels the Guilt or a compulsion to sneak a new purchase out of the repository of dirty dingy secrets at the shameful back of the wardrobe and pass it off as a ‘bargain’ or “These old things! Tsk! I’ve had them for years, darling.” (Besides the fact that we never address one another other as ‘darling’ – now that would set the alarm bells jangling.)
Therefore, my attitude towards footwear is simple: the sensualista likes well-made shoes that are pleasing to the eye and touch. They do not come cheap. They should not come cheap; quality has its price. (And I’m from Yorkshire, right? There’s always a catch in ‘owt for nowt’, be it merely the bad karma.) They do not necessarily come exorbitantly expensive, either. They are invariably Italian: it just happens that way, because Italians make the best shoes.
Anyway, I was going to show you this image. It was in the Friday supplement (called, surprisingly, ‘Friday’) of a commuter freesheet daughter picks up at the railway station most days. It’s called ‘20Minuten’, presumably because that’s how long it takes you to read it. I would call it ‘Siebeneinhalb Minuten’.
This is – would you believe? – an advert for a chain of shoe shops called ‘Max’. I pass two branches of Max on a regular basis. They are emporia I have never felt drawn into. Max shoes could best be described as knock-offs of knock-offs. I am utterly indifferent to them and I suspect many people are, hence the need for this style of advertising, which makes me yearn for a stringent bondage session or at least the attentiveness and skill of ‘Mr Chang Hong Kong Tailor – in town for two days only’, but not those shoes. The shoes are meh, which is why you aren’t being encouraged to look at them. The man who buys them is the man who walks on women (old Chinese proverb). As for the message: If I were of Chinese (or Japanese?) ethnicity, I’d be a bit pissed off. What’s the link anyway? Is it an allusion to foot-binding, or an homage to her sister who sews them together in a Shenzhen sweatshop? If I were a bondage master - OK, mistress - I’d be very pissed off (and you wouldn’t want to cross me if I were a pissed-off bondage mistress). Having had the good fortune to experience the bliss of being put into a karada body weave by someone who knew what they were doing, I have to tell you: that is a piss poor example of the art of rope.
The bottom line: Max shoes have sturdy laces and are good for people who don’t know their kink from their konk and would rather spend money on holidays than shoes. I, as I’m sure you’ve deduced, am an adherent of a contrasting doctrine. I’m the Russian Orthodox to their naughty Lutheran. Confession: I don’t really like holidays… I don’t like the upheaval. I’ve been as far away from here as you can get on this planet. It was lovely, but it’s been done. I like going away for a couple of days and then coming home again. I also like pretty shoes, intelligent insults and excellent advertising. Below is a celebration of the antithesis by Jung von Matt, an agency that holds in its portfolio the likes of Mercedes-Benz and Evian.
Addendum 21.9.09: Read advertising insider Copyranter’s take and some background info. Thank you to Copyranter and Tess.
