Janetta Mackay: Curse of the white shoe

Buy in haste, repent with every footstep... Picture / Janetta Mackay

In my efforts to be a step ahead on the white shoe trend, I've been left feeling well and truly a fashion victim. I should have known better than to buy not one but two pairs of the damned things this season, given how I've always found white shoes a style challenge.

First I had to overcome my snobbish association of white footwear with scuffed tassled ankle boots, then I had to gamble with whether I could be the sort of soigné woman to successfully work white into my wardrobe.

Regular readers may remember me umming and aahing over a year ago about whether to succumb to the smart casual allure of a pair of white punched leather sneakers and forgo my fears they would look grubby in days.

Well this season I did it again. Buying into a pair of white slingback sandals with a sensible low block heel and a fetching rose gold metal bow. Then again. With a pair of white pool slides with nice crossover strap detail.

The idea being that these styles would crisp up summer dresses in a fresh way. The problem is all three of these ventures into the idea of effortless cool, have ended in a pile of off-white angst.

First up the sneakers, which are still on my shoe rack, but shouldn't be. The lace-ups are a tongue-less design, which given how the laces rubbed my feet makes it obvious why tongues have endured. I've worn them without laces a couple of times, but feel like a try-hard teenage so they really will have to go.

The slingbacks I spotted in Melbourne in November and snapped them up anticipating a happy New Year together. This month I wore them to Sydney, packing light feeling pleased with how they would be able to transition from work to casual. I got off the plane and realised the bow and buckle had fallen off somewhere in flight. Given this was only the third time I had worn the shoes I was not impressed, but sadly couldn't find a Sydney branch of the store to complain to.

It's now nearly three months since I bought the badly glued things and without a receipt or a Melbourne trip looming, it looks like they're destined to become landfill. Stuck with only ballet flats in a sweltering Sydney, I headed to Westfield Bondi Junction where I spied the white pool slides.

"I'll wear them, don't worry about the box," I said, pleased to be out of closed toe shoes. By the time I'd walked to the other end of the mall, the blistering had begun. Not just minor rubs, but a deep diagonal cut across the top of each foot, which two weeks later is still red and scabbed. I could try plasters and breaking them in, but the weight of the shoe's rubber sole looks likely to drag the leather cross-over strap deeper with every step.

Buy in haste, repent at leisure - but at least they were on sale. Perhaps they might find a new home with someone with a lower instep or a higher pain tolerance. Or perhaps I should leave them on the shoe rack as a reminder of my curse of the white shoe.

- VIVA