My New-to-Me Love-It-Forever Shoe Brand—Fluevogs

Q. John Fluevog, where have your shoes been all my life?

A. We’ve been at 302 Newbury Street in Boston since 1987. Sorry you haven’t noticed.

Q. Me, too!

I can’t remember how I happened upon the Fluevog website. But when I clicked on “Shop, ” I saw the magnificent words “Unisex Styles.” That's code for shoes made to men's quality standards, but that women can wear (see my previous rant). I barely avoided swooning and somehow managed to click through.

And, along with the predictable “unisex” items such as belts and bags, I saw fourteen—14!—unisex styles. Wow. This was much more than the typical “let’s pretend these shoes are unisex so we can sell more” marketing ploy. So excited that I could barely breathe, I clicked on “About Fluevog.”

As I read, I started falling in love with the company. “About” shares helpful facts such as:

• Their Angel shoes have Satan-resistant powers (“You’re wearing Angels right now, right? Look around – do you see him?”)
• John Fluevog and God design the shoes (“Sometimes they fight over who’s head designer.”)
• “All our styles are shoe repair friendly, which means that any local shoe cobbler in your area should be able to do repairs for you.”)
• Lionel Hampton played vibes with Benny Goodman’s big band between 1936 and 1940

Sigh. Swoon.

And the FAQ, the FAQ. OMG. It’s… so… info-rich, so… full of questions that actual customers have asked, rather than the usual company-centric marketese.

• Do any of your boots fit larger calves? Can the calves be stretched? “We try our best to have a boot for everyone, and will always carry boots that run narrow, and some that run wide.... Some boot shafts can be stretched up to 2 inches.... For a better idea ... contact a Fluevog store directly.”
• What size should I order? How does this style run? “…the best ... is to contact a Fluevog store directly. They ... can best describe the fit to you over the phone or via email.”
• When are you getting the boot restock back in? “[Winter styles are] first arriving in August/September and restock arriving in November/December. Spring stock does not contain boots... arrives in February and is restocked in April/May.” Transparency! It equals happiness! At least for me.
• About the Materials and Production. The production seems… so… ethical! “Our shoes are designed in Vancouver, Canada... Roughly 60% of our shoes are made in Portuguese factories, some we have been working with for over ten years. We also use factories in Mexico, Peru, China, and Vietnam…. [O]ur factories fully comply with the Labour Law of the PRC act of 2007 (also known as the Worker’s Rights Act of 2008). This brings all of our factories in line with “Western” labour standards, and is checked regularly.”
  

After my husband threw a glass of cold water on me and helped me breathe into a paper bag, I went back to the styles. Brandenburg was the first Unisex style, and I clicked on it.



O.M.G.

These are the shoes I was whining about in my last post. Traditional oxfords/brogues (I haven’t learned the finer distinctions of traditional shoe styles yet, but I know they’re not derbys*) that women can wear! John Fluevog says so! I can buy and wear shoes that won’t go out of style! I have permission from a shoe manufacturer! (Don’t get me started on whether and how women—i.e., I—can find long-lasting, value-laden clothing. That’s a whole other neurosis—er, post.)

*The laces on Oxfords/brogues are set into the vamp. The laces on derbys are set into a piece of leather that’s attached to the vamp. So saith Wikipedia.

I bashed the “Contact: Fluevog Stores” button. Although I didn’t have much hope. Really good brands tend to live in NYC, not Boston. OMG, they have a store in Boston. OMG. Newbury Street. OMG! I’d be in Boston the next day! I wrote the address into my planner. And immediately started worrying about the attitude of a hip shoe store on Newbury Street. Would they even let me in the door?

But no worries. For starters, Fluevog is at the Hynes end of Newbury Street, home of the less intimidating stores and restaurants. It’s a walk-down into a teensy store chock-full of gorgeous, gorgeous shoes. Shoe heaven. I avoided fainting, but I think I fondled every pair. Oh, and gorgeous bags and belts. And a glass case of Meltonian shoe polish: polishable leather = long-lasting leather.

I tried on the Brandenburg Light and lapped the store several times. Leather soles—leather!—that slipped a little on the carpet and made me daydream about scuffing the sole on the pavement and the other pleasures of breaking them in. Not that they needed much breaking in. Really good fit. Soft, supple leather. I could feel the individual pieces of leather that made up the shoe, which spoke to their design and hands-on manufacture, but nothing was tight or rubbed or scraped. But, to tell the truth, I felt a little too… butch in them.

“Do you have other styles like this?” I asked Jessamy, the Newbury-Street-styled-but-totally-non-attitude sales assistant. “Sure!” she said and disappeared into the back. She brought out two more boxes. One was a buckle-on Swordfish. (Can’t find it on the website, or I’d link to it.) Not quite the right fit. The other was Lois, a women’s oxford style with heels.



Let’s face it, I’m short. I need a heel. And they felt faboo. I had to have them. I could feel my credit card itching in anticipation.

I told Jessamy that I was going to buy them… but, le sigh, not today. They’d be my getting-a-job present. She was totally cool and wrote the info on a Fluevog business card specifically designed to note the exact pair you wanted. You know, so you can save up before buying.

And speaking of saving up, let’s talk about price. Fluevogs aren’t cheap. They run about $250 a pair. This is way more than I'm used to paying, which is usually about $40 for a pair of department-store sale shoes that I hope don't hurt too much.

But I think Fluevogs are worth the money, for several reasons.

• The brand is run by a person, not a corporation.
• The factories put people to work and appear to be ethically run.
• The shoes are well made, using high-quality materials and manufacturing techniques, are repairable, and are otherwise built to last.
  
• They’re REALLY comfortable, even at first wearing.
• And the designs I’m most interested in buying are based on classic designs and won’t go out of style.

So I’m buying Lois as soon as I get a job. I think I’ve found my forever shoe brand.

And by the way, John Fluevog, you had me at “Unisex”—the code word for high-quality shoes for women.

Women’s Clothing Is Sexist—But Not in the Way You Think

It’s a given that women are treated as sexual objects in the media and in everyday life. Look at any TV show or magazine. Look at the feminist memes floating around your Facebook feed.

But women’s clothing is highly sexist in itself. Yes, I mean the garments.

Not just because women’s clothing includes things that mens’ clothing doesn’t include. Not just because women’s summer staples are supposedly teeny shorts and tiny tops. Or because sandals are designed to show off our painted toenails and stilettos are designed to push our hips forward. Not just because we’re expected to color our hair to look younger and to make up our faces in conformist masks.

Sexism in women’s fashion runs much deeper and is much more fundamental than these usual suspects.

Men can easily buy high-quality, long-lasting, wardrobe-staple, style-heavy and fashion-defying clothing. The oxford-cloth dress shirts my dad stopped buying when he retired twenty years ago haven’t gone out of style. He can put one on and no one will guess that he didn’t buy it last week. The loafers and brogues he bought thirty years ago still look like new (weekly polishing), and he can buy exact duplicates today. His wool sport jackets from the sixties and seventies and eighties are in good shape and don’t look like fashion travesties. His ties are a little dated, to be sure. But he can wear his Liberty ties from the seventies and eighties. They’re vintage now.

That’s what happens when men buy well. They can wear their clothes for decades. Their clothes hold up and they don’t look dated. My dad didn’t have to buy in New York or London or Rome to get this result. He just went to the better-quality men’s store at the local mall.

Women’s fashion is designed to be, well, fashion. It’s designed to be highly decorative, of the moment, and then to be discarded and replaced with something else.

Can you wear a woman’s suit from the eighties without feeling (and looking, let's face it) absolutely ridiculous? Those blinding colors! Those shoulders! Can you wear a woman’s day dress from the early sixties—with its gloves and stockings and jacket and hat and matching purse and shoes—unless it’s for cosplay? Can you even wear those skinny jeans that seem to be the only type of jeans you can find? Really, you can wear them? Really? (Just because you can wear them doesn’t mean you should.)

Look at women’s watches—as I’ve been doing lately. They’re really jewelry. I dare you to find one that you can actually read (yes, my eyesight isn’t what it used to be) and that you can expect to last several years. Women’s watches are high on fashion—what material the band is made of, the style of the band, the color and material of the face—and short on utility. Men’s watches are high on visibility and durability. (Oh, and they’re high on extra bells and whistles, like stopwatch and time-zone calculation functions.)

Look at women’s shoes. Is there something like a women’s brogue, something long-lasting that you can wear for decades if you maintain it properly? No. A brogue is a popular women’s style right now, but they’re all of the moment, with heels and in right-now colors and made of short-lived, high-maintenance materials, like pale, lightweight suedes. Women’s “brogues” have grown far away from their sturdy walking-shoe roots—a history that men’s brogues still maintain.

And look at women’s shirts—I’ve been hunting for a really good woman’s button-down shirt. Can’t find one. Women’s button-downs for officewear are often made of linen and rayon and silk, so they have to be maintained carefully—and expensively—throughout their useful lives. Their colors and tiny style details change every year, so you can’t wear them for long without looking dated. And they’re often too short to stay tucked in. (I guess designers think that a woman working in an office doesn’t need to turn, bend, or even sit.) For casual wear, women’s button-downs are shown as outerwear accessories, worn belted over shells, fashionable alternatives to sweaters. Oh, and they’re made of linen and rayon and silk.

I recently bought a women’s shirt from Thomas Pink. I had high hopes walking into the store. But I learned that they only offer a couple of women’s styles. (The shop is famous for offering multiple fit options, letting them match every peccadillo of their male customers’ bodies.) I was promised that the collars wouldn’t curl, even though they don’t offer collar stays with their women’s shirts. (Of course un-stayed collars curl. It’s just a fact, like gravity.) I’d hoped to be able to choose among the several fabric weights that they offer men, but their womens’ styles only come in one weight—heavier than most women’s shirts, but lighter than their best mens’ shirting. The shirt is really good quality—for a woman’s shirt—but not the dream come true I’d hoped for.

I want to be able to find clothes and accessories that don’t discriminate against my gender.

That are made well and built to last. Using high-quality materials. That fit me well. That won’t look dated in two years—five years, ten years, twenty years—from now. That are high-value.

That have style, not fashion, as Coco Chanel distinguished.

I guess I’ll have to wait until my next life, when I come back as a man.

Secret Weapons—Secret to Me, Until Now

So many secret weapons in a woman’s arsenal. Little day-savers... that I’ve never heard about until starting CapsuleStyle.

I've found two in the last two days.

• Bodyglide Original Anti-Chafe Balm (1.5 ounce) Thanks to “From Couch to 5k,” a six-week course that I've just signed up for at Greater Boston Running Company in Lexington, MA, I just got this yesterday and can't wait to try it. As a curvy girl, I've had a problem with, ahem, chafing since I was ten. Going to the beach? Wearing shorts or a skirt sans pantyhose? Hooray, a day ending in raw, stinging thighs.
• Hollywood Fashion Tape—Lets you stick garments to themselves, each other, or yourself. Its Amazon.com entry claims that it’s “specially formulated adhesive is gentle on skin, hypoallergenic, and leaves no residue on your garments.”

I'm trying both, but if they work, I wonder how I've lived without these two secret weapons. The answer: uncomfortably.

Building from the Ground Up—Camisoles

Planning my capsule wardrobe from the ground up, I decided to ditch my six elderly cotton tank tops (in a variety of useless colors) that I wore as camisoles and buy—duh, duh, DUH!—actual camisoles.

I went to Target and found just the thing. Gilligan O’Malley Seamless Cami. I tried one on. It has a body-hugging fit so it won’t bunch up in my shirt. It pulls down to my thighs, so I’ll still be covered if I—gasp—bend over. The neckline covers my bra (one style, black and beige) completely. And at $18.00 each, the price is right. Win! I got two, in black and beige.

And then I wore one. It rolled right up above my waist the second I started moving. I couldn't make it stay down. Now this may be because I’m f.a.t. Maybe these are designed for skinny teenagers, not for middle-aged me. After all, Target’s price points are family-friendly, and most of their lingerie is teenwear. But you’d think that something that looks and acts an awful lot like shapewear should be made for middle-aged me, instead of skinny teenagers. Or maybe I bought the wrong size, maybe I’m an XL (stop judging me, women’s sizing) instead of an L. (Though the endlessly-out-of-stock Target only had S, M, and L.)

So I decided to buy better. Since I’m examine and re-developing an entire wardrobe, buying better makes sense. Off to Nordstrom, land of cheerful, helpful experts. One of the lingerie associates gave me three camis to try: Yummie Tummy Girlfriend Skinny Tank, DKNY Fusion Shaping Camisole, and Shimera Seamless Tank. (CapsuleStyle at Pinterest.)

I would never think of using piquet in a camisole, but Yummie Tummy’s Girlfriend Skinny Tank did. It’s reversible, with a vee-neck on one side and a scoop-neck on the other. I didn’t see a difference in the necklines when I tried it on, though. The vee-neck wound up looking like the scoop, except with a tiny seam right down the middle. The sales associate said that it would help keep you warm. This would have been a good selling point for me ten or more years ago, but not at my flashy time of life. And I worried that the piquet would get friendly with my shirt and make the tank bunch up.

I was immediately put off by the spaghetti straps on the Donna Karan Fusion Shaping Camisole. That’s just me—the neckline on tops with non-adjustable spaghetti straps tends to fall somewhere around my waist. Though the straps on this cami are adjustable. But make no mistake, Fusion is serious shapewear. I had to struggle to get into it and jump up and down to get out of it. (I almost panicked and called for help while trying to take it off.) It feels very tight once you’ve got it on, but not uncomfortable-tight. Though I do wonder if you’d feel claustrophobic after wearing it all day. It has a cute sweetheart neckline on the hanger, but it turned into a plain old vee-neck once I got it on. It’s short enough to make me nervous about ride-up, coming to the top of my bikini undies.

The Shimera Seamless Tank is a camisole rather than shapewear. It’s fitted and clingy, but not tight. It pulls down to mid-thigh, so it shouldn’t ride up (fingers crossed). It comes in lots of colors, and the price is right (yes, that’s my mantra) at $26.00 each, or $48.00 for two. They were all out of my size, so I ordered one to try, in “beige frappe.” In three to eight business days, I’ll be field-testing the Shimera.

Building my capsule wardrobe one piece at a time.

Fashion Is for You, Not for Someone Else

What is fashion, anyway?

Merriam Webster online offers three definitions. The first is “the make or form of something.” The second is “a distinctive or peculiar and often habitual manner or way of doing something (he will, after his sour fashion, tell you - Shakespeare)”; or “a mode of action or operation (orderly fashion).”

The third definition finally gets around to clothing:

• “the prevailing style (as in dress) during a particular time, or a garment in such a style, or
  
• social standing or prominence especially as signaled by dress or conduct (men and women of fashion).”
  

Let’s unpack that a little. The prevailing style in dress during a particular time. Look back at your family photos. You can tell what decade it is by what people are wearing, right? The shellacked bouffant, the miniskirt, and go-go boots? Yeah, baby, it’s the sixties. Crazy curly hair, bellbottoms, and collars wide enough to take flight? The seventies. Hyper-fluffy hair, bright colors, and severe or puffy (your choice) shoulders? The eighties. The Rachel, long floral skirts, and chunky heels? The nineties. Uggs, palazzo pants, and tanks showing your belly? The double-os.

But once you… reach a certain age… you’ve bought enough clothing to realize that it’s just stuff to cover you up so you can go out in public. Or to help you fit a role: you wouldn’t wear your Hello Kitty pj’s to your job at the doctor’s office, now would you? (I hope not.)

And you’re finally smart enough to realize that fashion is just someone from New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, wherever, telling you how to look, what to do with yourself. It’s icky to let someone else tell you how you should look in order to be pleasing to them. (Trust me, I know.) And you’ll never meet those fashion gurus anyway, so screw ’em.

So why bend to the whims of fashion when it’s something that’s here today and gone tomorrow?

Why not have clothes that you like, that suit you, and that you can be happy wearing every day? I don’t see why not.

So let’s lay down the first guidelines for CapsuleStyle:

• Your clothes will make you feel and look good. (Yes, I put “feel” before “look” on purpose.)
  
• Your clothes will fit you. They’ll suit your body, your coloration, and your lifestyle.
  
• You’ll look into your closet and smile every morning because you know that you can grab things that actually go together.
  

Sounds like a fashion win to me!

Mission: Women's Classic Style with a Capsule Wardrobe

So many women’s fashion blogs. But a search for “capsule wardrobe”on Technorati turns up nothing.

Well, it turns up three hits—one on packing effectively for travel and two dead links to an “inspired capsule” blog. Searches on "women's classic style” fashion, “women clothing classic,” and “women's fashion traditional” similarly turn up zilch.

Though entering “fashion classic style" brings up, among a bunch of not-on-point blogs about women's current fashion, A Suitable Wardrobe, a blog about “Classic Clothing and Accessories for Well Dressed Men.”

Sigh. What’s a girl to do?

I want to look good, and I want to do it without every morning turning into a “what can I wear today” scavenger hunt/panic attack. Putting outfits together doesn't come naturally to me, which is why I want a capsule wardrobe. And I'm totally juiced by Project 333, which helps you develop four seasonal wardrobes of 33 items each. (Did I mention that I'm totally envious of men's ability to be well dressed with just a few well-chosen items, a la A Suitable Wardrobe?)

So this blog will document my quest to develop my own capsule wardrobe. Just so you know, I’m middle-aged, overweight, white, cisfemale, and live in the Boston area. I favor a classic style, but I think the exercise of learning to develop a capsule wardrobe will be universally applicable.