I hate shopping for shoes. I particularly hate the sixteen year old sales assistants that you get in most shoe shops who seem far more interested in flirting with themselves than actually serving customers. The whole process is made even more stressful by the fact that my feet are quite big[1] which tends to limit my options in most shops.
All of this meant that my heart sank when I found a hole in my trusty old pair of Dr Martens shoes. I could see an afternoon in hell in my future. I planned to go to Oxford Street yesterday afternoon.
But then I had an idea. You can buy anything over the web these days, so why not look for online shoe shops. Now, some of you may recoil in horror at this idea. How can you possibly buy items of clothing online? Surely you want to examine the shoes before buying them, or even try them on? Of course, this plan probably wouldn’t work if it wasn’t for the fact that I knew exaclty what I wanted – a pair of black Dr Martens shoes to replace the old pair.
And within a short time, I had found what I was looking for. I bought them from a place called Cloggs (yeah, crap name isn’t it). I was so happy that I didn’t have to venture into a shoe shop that I even bought a new pair of Converse All-Stars at the same time.
My order was “despatched” [sic] today. Of course they won’t fit through the letterbox so there will be a trip to the sorting office at some point this week. But that’s better than having to go into a shoe shop.
I love the internet.
[1] UK size 11. Not sure what that is in foreign sizes.
Ugh, I also hate shopping for shoes! But I haven’t bought them from the high street in years. I use Vegetarian Shoes http://www.vegetarian-shoes.co.uk/ which apart from being completely free of animal products, are also excellent quality. I bought a pair of walking boots from them about 5 years ago and they are still waterproof and sturdy.
They allow returns if your first order doesn’t fit. Also they have a nice shop in Brighton which is worth a visit during a general day trip, and is a very different experience to high street shoe shops.
With DMs a competent cobbler certainly used to be able to order and attach a new sole. I used to get through about 4 soles per-upper when I wore Docs. Much cheaper! I stopped buying them after they shifted production off to China so I dunno if it’s still doable.
And if you want online shoes I’d suggest Ethical Wares (http://www.ethicalwares.com/range.htm). Nice shoes – much less boring than Vegetarian Shoes IMO :-) Cope with my size eleven plates of meat quite happily.
I have done some shopping online and I used a site called cazual there site is at http://www.cazual.co.uk they sell fashion clothing and shoes. The shoes arrived very quickly was very impressed with the service.