Tapestry Shoes

Weaving together fashion, history, and raw emotion

Perusing the fall shoe sales of the interwebs while bored out of my mind at a football game with the family, I fell upon these gorgeous Dolce and Gabbana tapestry and leather ankle boots. Something in the needlepoint detailing, and just-ever-so-slightly-off shape of the heel made me yearn for the old country (but does anyone ever know where exactly that is?) Regardless, it brought me back to old memories of failed and fruitless attempts at tapestry creation. Give me a needle and thread, and I will give you back a grubby, knotted ball of that same thread, having lost the needle, of course. 

My history with anything close to needlepoint has not been a harmonious one. My first attempts with latch-hooking in grade school resulted in a scruffy looking palm tree pseudo-pillow that I immediately gifted to a bemused cousin. Later attempts with knitting, cross stitching, and crocheting all lead to similar ends. I never even got to needlepoint, and had forgotten, or perhaps repressed my past life as a creator of textiles until I came across that same pillow at my cousin's house the other day, more than half a decade later. Seeing that awkward, out of place palm tree among their sartorial collection of knick  knacks made me think back to those formative years, which cemented an eternal love of everything "granny" fashion-wise. 

To be honest, I have no idea where the love came from. I have always had a taste for the eccentric, and perhaps that taste for something a bit different than what my cookie cutter classmates were wearing, melded with various semi-strict school dress codes over the years (no jeans, and, for a while, collared shirts only) resulted in my unique tastes. Wherever it came from, it has stayed with me through several different phases, punctuating my closets with florals, sweaters, and tons of skirts. It has saved me, in part, from falling into the high school traps of dressing like a streetwalker or a yoga instructor, and has elicited those gasps of, "what are you wearing?" on many an occasion. Dressing with a dash of "granny" all these years has done me well, and it was those few, slightly different, "granny" type pieces that first allowed me to test the waters of dressing apart from my peers, giving me the courage to rock my wallpaper pants, crazy heels, and whatever else I adore nowadays. 

These shoes are the embodiment of what dressing slightly "granny" means to me. However, they are also, without any backstory, simply gorgeous shoes, and I am obsessed. Sadly, at a discount price of $945, they are a bit out of my price range. I wish anyone who wears them the confidence and sense of self that comes simply from wearing them. This post was unexpectedly deep. Hmmmmmm.....