State Of The Shoe-ion Address... Or: WHY I HAVE FOUR TOTALLY DISSIMILAR BUT TOTALLY AFFORDABLE PAIRS OF SHOES ON MY LIVING ROOM FLOOR

You guys. I'm a simple woman with simple needs: quite simply, I need a LOT of shoes. Fortunately, I don't have expensive taste in shoes. They just have to be cute and possibly even a little absurd. As you can imagine, this has manifested itself in a problem that enjoys overwhelming volume but an alarming lack of consistency: since I rarely spend over $100 on a pair of shoes (a lot of my shoes are barely $50), I've amassed a huge shoe collection that makes about as much sense as your typical Lady Gaga video -- fun to look at it, but let's not kid ourselves. Like the "Born This Way" video, if you looked at my entire shoe collection, you'd leave like "well, that was kinda cool to look at for a few minutes but... I don't get it. Which is how I found myself in my living room tonight, surrounded by the four pairs of totally dissimilar shoes featured above.

Let's go from left to right.

1.) ASOS Superstar Tapestry Heels ($78.57): Dudes. These are FLORAL TAPESTRY heels with A GOLD STUDDED TOE. It's the mullet of shoes. Party in the toe... business in the back? Eh? Anyway, they're increds. Except I DO call bullshit since they were on sale when I bought them and now they're mysteriously not on sale. Ahhhh capitalism, you crazy scoundrel you!

2.) Jeffrey Campbell Downtown booties (no longer available): I bought these on a trip to Need Supply when I was visiting my sister in Richmond last year. Real quick: hat tip to Need Supply. They're like an indie Urban Outfitters, except they don't steal people's designs. Anyway, they were on sale for $49 from $130. That's called usin' your noodle. OH, and they're SO comfortable. I walked about a MILE out of my way lost en route to a VH1 taping yesterday, so I learned this the hard way. (The hard way that comes from not giving a shit about reading maps!) Seriously, these shoes are like crack. Or Pinkberry. Straight men fall out of their cubicles to ask me about them. My only regret is not buying the orange ones when I had the chance. Man, hindsight. She's such the little fucker!

3.) Matisse Nugent booties ($193) : The nice people who do Matisse's PR reached out and sent me these, and the second I opened the box and took in the holy sight that is their Nugent bootie, this was pretty much my reaction:




Like Cup Stacking Girl, I too achieved something great! SHOE NIRVANA (shirvana?) These booties aren't just ANIMAL print. They're DALMATIAN print. (Not real dalmatians, obviously! They're IMITATION DALMATIAN. From the NATION of faux DALMATIAN.) And they're so perfectly '70s Marc Bolan shaped, which is what I really want in a bootie, you know? Intensely, almost preternaturally perfect. These booties are the Ryan Gosling of footwear. Like HOW could anything be that perfect?