Monday, November 22, 2010

2nd Letter to Piperlime: The Black Heel


Piperlime
Dear Piperlime,

Now I don't want to bite the hand that gives me gift cards, but I am trying to heal our relationship and I hear that communication is key.  I see you going down a dark path, and I want to help out before it's too late.   

Here's the deal: I want to get a more professional wardrobe but one that actually looks like me and not like I'm an extra in Working Girl, and step number one is heels.  I am very flexible with colors and patterns even, since I like shoes that pop.  I have only three caveats for heels:
  1. Heel height.  I am already 5'9 so high heels are not my friend: they throw me off balance like a drunk stilt-walker and I have no particular desire to be 6'1, thank you. 
  2. Chunky heels or platforms also are an absolute no; the whole point of heels is to look delicate and to push out the right curves in the right direction, so clomping around on hoofs would defeat the whole purpose and sacrifice of making myself even more Amazonian. 
  3. ...1/2, leather and good quality.  I want my feet to have sensation left in them at the end of the day, and I wear shoes for years if I like them. 
Piperlime, that's not asking too much, right?  I'm a pretty easy customer, aren't I?  Why, then, in your selection of 78 low to mid heels, almost all of them are bland neutrals?  I see you are in denial, you can't believe you could have allowed that to happen to your product selection.  Allow me to present my case: out of that 78, only 9 are something other than neutral colors.  And do you need me to tell you what those 9 shoes are like?  Stop being childish, I don't like this any more than you do, so you can quit rolling your eyes.  You need to face the truth if this is going to change.  2 shoes are very underwhelming heels of actual color (red and yellow if you are curious), 5 are animal print (yes, I know, animal print heels are adorable, but I cannot wear animal print anything without looking like I'm dressing up as a hooker for Halloween.  How about some variety?), and 2 look like what you would see when you close your eyes after spinning around way too fast in a room with blue 80s era floral print wallpaper.
Bandolino Berry...Wallpaper
You see the problem, right?  These are boring, like furniture in a nursing home boring, and most of them are dated and not in a cute Madmen kind of way.  Do you have any concept of how delighted I would be at a vintage inspired, low-heel pump like any of these? 
ModCloth: Seychelles "Watching the Clock" 
How delighted, you ask? - picture a rusty Autumn evening, the first evening of a long holiday weekend off, in which I mildly indulge in pyrotechnics by enjoying a bonfire with hot toddies, heavy on the whiskey: in a word, euphoric.  Well, even shoes like the ones above would not accomplish this level of euphoria.  But your low-heeled pumps inspire something more like this: after planning a holiday for two weeks I get a creeping death sickness the very evening before my scheduled time off, my husband is stranded away from home due to weather conditions, and an over-sharing neighbor who will not take a hint invites themselves in to "help take care of" me, i.e. I am utterly annoyed by your selection and want to be left alone.

So, in the effort to salvage our relationship even after such a blow to my basic footwear needs, I turned to the most basic of the basic: black heels.  Amoung 31 pairs of low-heeled black pumps only one peked my interest even a little bit:
Salina
These got one mediocre review, but I want to check out the Pour la Victoire brand, (it's a Brazilian company inspired by French couture, so that sounds wild) so I am going to go ahead and give these a shot, Piperlime.  And while I am waiting to get these in the mail, and appreciate your awesome free shipping, which promises to be even faster than before, I really want you to think about the direction you are currently going: do you want to keep the current Piperlime woman you are appealing to, or do you want me...and every last one of my friends, as customers (if I guess their aesthetic correctly).

Love,
Meghan

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Omg those blue things are nasty! are they from this decade?!x

Meghan McNally said...

Welcome, Veronica! I checked out your blog and it is great! I will certainly become a follower as soon as I can locate my BlogLovin password.

And Lady Noix: *ahem* I know, right?!?! Does that shades of blue shoe not look like the oooollldd throw pillows you didn't want to touch in the hospital waiting room and/or the lazy prints framed as "art" in the dentist office when you were little? Most items with this awful print have since vanished, but the ugly remains hanging in the air long after.