Mood:  lucky

Yours truly has been offered and has accepted a promotion at her current place of employment. Besides getting a nice, not extravagant nor exorbitant, raise, I will also have supervisory duties. Finally, people, besides my children, will have to obey my orders. <Insert evil laugh > Seriously, though, I'm officially middle-management. Besides the little raise, I want something else from this position. I want respect. In order to get respect, I realize that I have to look like I deserve respect. So, I went to Target and loaded up slacks, blouses, fancy ruche polo shirts, and dark wash jeans.

The only thing that has eluded me is the comfortable 3-F shoe to match my new supervisor-like duds.  What are 3-F shoes, you ask? They are fashionable and fierce flats, and, affordable and comfortable. I've been a serious 3-F shoe quest for the past two weeks, and I'm at a stalemate. Every single pair of pointy-toe, round-toe, kitten heel, pancake heel, wide width, medium width, 1/2-size too big, 1/2 size too small, leather, tweed, canvas, patent or PVC shoe I've tried on in the past two weeks have not fit or were not comfortable.  (Last Wednesday, I tried on no less than 30 pairs of shoes at DSW.) They were too long, too short, too revealing, or unsupportive. To top it off, some of them were plain ugly especially the ones with the weird ruche/elastic thing at the back end of the vamp above the heel. There's also this other trend of curled up flats. Why do I have to unfold my shoes to put them on?

I've come up with an arch nemesis to my shoe quest, and her name is Tory Burch. Tory Burch is the designer of the ubiquitous and oft-knocked off round-toe flats with the gosh-awful gold-plated cross emblem on the front. They look rappers from 1987 that used to rock Mercedes-Benz emblems dangling from their thick gold chains. It is all her fault that I can't find a pair of 3-F shoes because every one is copying her ugly design. *blech*

However, I have hope. I was reading the March '08 Elle magazine and read a wonderful article. Apparently, the shoe designer behind some of Balenciga's best loved shoes has created a fashionable line for the Gap. (It is called the European Collection on the Gap's website, which kind of bothers me because I think Americans are stylish enough to have "American" collections but I digress.) Although $100 is a little out of my price range for a pair shoes, I might pony up the dough if this shoe lives up to my pre-conceived notions.

Below is a pair of Pierre Hardy designed, pointy-toe flats for the Gap. Please live up to the hype, Pierre.