Waistbands are tricky like that. When you put the waistband on, you are raising the item on your body. And then there is the whole ‘weight gain and/or loss’ thing. I tend to gain in the front of my stomach and even if everything ends up the same circumference, more inches in the front pulls the item toward the front, throws off the side seams, and generally makes your Aunty extremely grouchy. Same deal when I lose weight – the front drops down because the waistband is too big. Fixing a waistband is one of those onerous tasks that causes more women to end up putting safety pins in than any other, I think.

Enter the DH – or more correctly, the DH’s dress slacks, which I have taken in and out on numerous occasions when he, too, has gone through some body changes. This was not a terribly difficult task, as men’s dress slacks have a waistband which is split in the center back. As a matter of fact, the two pieces of the waistband are put onto the center back seam without it being sewn all the way first (the light is beginning to dawn, right?), so that tailors can make their adjustment without having to take the waistband off first.

Women’s clothing, on the other hand, generally has a one-piece waistband on it. To fix a problem you have to take the entire waistband off and then do the adjustment at whatever seam and then fiddle around with making the waistband smaller and yada yada yada. Hair-pulling ensues.

So, since I don’t want to have to do THAT anymore, here’s what I did:
I measured all the way around the waist on the pants and added the amount I would to put the pants closures on. Then I added an inch for every place I was going to split the waistband.

I split my waistband actually in two places (the zip is in the left side seam): the right side seam and the back center seam.

I opened up the center back and side seams of the pants about two inches, applied the waistband pieces there, sewed up the waistband seam and the side seam and the waistband seam and the back center seam in one go.

I folded over the waistband, sewed it down.

Done. Best fitting waistband I ever had. And if I need to take it out, I can just open up the waistband where I sewed it down at the the back center seam and the side seam, open the waistband down as far as I want to get more breathing room, and resew it.

I will, in the future, do a version of this on ‘store bought’ slacks and blue jeans so that you can see that you can use this same technique to rescue these pants also.

He thought it might be ‘some sort of twill’. Several of us recognized immediately that what he had was not twill but I thought that perhaps a little bit of information on what twill is…and ain’t..might be useful.

The picture at the top is a twill that is probably the most accessible and well known to all of us – and that is denim. I put the pen in the picture to draw your attention to the twill weave effect, which goes diagonally on the goods. That picture was taken straight down the leg of an old pair of blue jeans, so although the ‘straight of the grain’ is vertical, you can see that the twill effect runs diagonally.

The definition, per wiki: “Twill is a type of fabric woven with a pattern of diagonal parallel ribs.It is made by passing the weft thread over one or more warp threads and then under two or more warp threads and so on, with a “step” or offset between rows to create the characteristic diagonal pattern. Because of this structure, twills generally drape well. Examples of twill fabric are chino, drill, denim, gabardine, tweed and serge.” Twill

The one thing this definition does not mention (strangely enough) is that this structure does something else for fabrics: It makes them extremely “hard wearing”. Look at that list and what many times these fabrics are used for:
Chino: Men’s work pants and hot weather military uniforms.
Drill: Men’s work clothing where an element of protection is required; also used as coverings on items that have to take heat such as ironing board pads. Usually light colored or natural and all-cotton.
Denim: The original American work clothing: blue jeans. The original fabric came in a dual fiber form: the dark blue was cotton and the white or natural was actually wool. You can still get ‘wool denim’ clothing and fabrics from time to time and it is a fabric that the Australian Wool Board has promoted (for obvious reasons).
Gabardine: The number of various fibers that this material can be made from are legion, but it remains that this fabric is used for nicer levels of office clothing such as suits for men and women.
Serge: This fabric is not as popular in men’s suits as it once was but was considered very hard wearing; one weakness was that it had to be pressed from the back through a press cloth. The fibers in the weave are so numerous that pressing from the front caused shine.
Tweed: The best use of this form of twill is in outerwear as the fibers in the weave are relatively coarse.

So, what was the fabric that the blogger got? It certainly had a pattern of parallel ribs on it, but the direction was horizontal to the straight grain of the goods. I just made a skirt (thank you; I couldn’t find a navy pencil skirt in my size any place. I had to make one for myself) out of the same type of fabric, though mine is a mixture of cotton and silk. This weave is called “faille” and can be found in many different fibers. The ribs are more pronounced than in a twill (besides the direction being totally different) and this gives the fabric entirely different qualities in terms of draping, durability and so on. In general, it is seen as a dressier fabric than twills are and is generally not used in items such as pants, where durability in the seat and inner leg areas is a concern.

So, from a ‘bang for your buck’ aspect, what’s your best choice? Well, for rough outdoor work clothing, denim and drill can’t be beaten. For suits with slacks, gabardine is best (and even better if you get it in ‘worsted wool’ or a ‘worsted wool blend’ as the worsted processing produces fibers with a hard finish, which makes the fabric even more durable). For women’s suits and dresses, gabardine is a very good choice as gabardine (especially in lighter weights) has a very nice drape but will also tailor well. For outerwear, heavier gabardines and tweeds are very good choices. Remember – hold up the fabric in the item up to the light and move one hand up and down so that the light plays across the face of the fabric and you’ll be able to see the diagonal rib effect. That way, you’ll know you have a true twill.

I recall once doing a trade show in January in Anaheim, California. It rained for several days and hovered in the high 30s. We were all extremely miserable (and I thanked myself numerous times for hauling around my wool-lined raincoat). A cotton sweater at that time and in that place would have been useless.

Why IS that? Why are plant based fibers such as cotton, flax (linen), rayon, etc. actually worthless in the cold? And why are animal based fibers such as mohair, wool, angora, etc. so useful?

The secret is at the top of the page. That is a photomicrograph of a fiber from a sheep. Those ‘plates’ along the outside are referred to as scales and they are the secret to the warmth of animal fibers because they trap and hold warm air.

We used to raise sheep and I can assure you that with even only a ½ inch of a fleece on, there is no such thing as a cold sheep. As a matter of fact, we often used to go out in the winter, locate the sheep in the snow drifts by their black noses, call them in to dinner and they would rise up, encrusted with snow and ice, leaving a completely melted spot underneath them. If we put our hands into the fleece, parting it, steam would actually escape. On the one hand, the fleece would trap the warm moist body heat of the sheep – but on the other hand, it would insulate at the outer edges, allowing the snow to remain frozen at the top – providing them with a sort of weather-proof roof.

All those scales provide lots and lots of little pockets to trap warm air and that’s what keeps you warm. That’s why the common wisdom is to dress in layers. The more layers you have, the more pockets to trap warm air.

Another factor in terms of wool is its uncanny ability to absorb moisture and still keep you warm. Sheep’s wool can absorb up to 40% of its weight in moisture. That makes wool garments warm..but also very very heavy if they get wet.

Now, back to plant based fibers. The reason that plant based fibers won’t keep you as warm as animal based ones is that the fibers themselves are totally smooth. There are no scales. On the other hand, this makes them absolutely magical in terms of warm weather garments. They breathe wonderfully, allowing body heat to escape. But if you get wet (sweaty tee shirt, anyone?), unless you are someplace where the air temperature is pretty close to your body temperature, you will feel cold and clammy – your body heat is being wicked away through the wet fabric. That is the major reason why wearing cotton denim jeans to go hiking, climbing or skiing is not a good idea. Hypothermia is NOT fun and is many times fatal.

So, given that most of us are not doing the Sir Edmond Hillary bit and are wondering more along the lines of ‘how do I lower the thermostat inside the house and still feel comfortable?”

Here are a few tips.
Moist air feels invariably warmer than dry air. No matter what your heating system (forced hot air, radiators, electric baseboard, wood stove), the hotter you make the indoor air, the lesser the capacity for that air to carry moisture. So, merely by lowering the temperature, the air will have more capacity to carry moisture and will feel a little warmer. But you have to have moisture to put into the air. Here are a few ideas:

If you have clothes drying or airing racks, do your laundry and put it out on the racks around the house, preferably where people are actually doing their activities. If you have forced hot air, putting them over or next to the grates will perform two functions: The clothing dries faster and it will put moisture in the air. If you are short on laundry, soak towels, wring out and hang those.

Put shallow pans or non-melting containers right next to hot air grates, on top of radiators or on wood stoves. Just make sure they are full of water at all times.

Cooking puts a lot of moisture into the air. Pull out a fan, put it into a doorway and use that to pull moisture into another room.

Dressing correctly always helps. There are certain clothing items that definitely give you warmth bang for the buck.
Non-cotton socks and tights. This year, Dame Fashion is smiling on women and heavy tights are in stock everywhere and worth investing in. A good base layer – look for tights and socks with acrylic and/or wool. Silk sock liners are a good addition as well and are very thin. You may have to order over the internet.

Lined clothing. A lining in anything ups the warmth factor, especially (ahem) if it’s made with some wool. In items such as dresses and skirts, look for a skirt that is flared, pleated, or gathered and has a lining (again, we are applying more fabric to the job of capturing more warmth. Pencil skirts are foxy but don’t have enough room to trap warm air). In items such as slacks or pants, look for brushed surfaces, wool, and lining. I know in men’s slacks, most of the time the lining only comes down to the knees, which is better than nothing. If you are stuck waiting on an open platform, walking to work etc., investing in some of the high tech knit fabric base layer “long johns” or silk or, ahem, wool is a good idea, as is wearing layers on top and a knee length top coat or lined raincoat. With skirts and dresses, adding a slip or petticoat does marvels.

Undershirts (aka top ‘base layers’). Wearing ANYTHING close to your body underneath the top half of your clothing makes an amazing difference. Sleeveless tanks in something other than cotton are great; silk if you are feeling luxurious. There are also finely knit merino wool base layers around. Polyester and nylon are, frankly, worthless in my opinion.

Multiple thin beats one thick. If it’s really cold, I find that wearing one huge heavy sweater just doesn’t do it. Part of the problem is that invariably, I end up someplace where it is warm enough that I need to take off the sweater but then I freeze. So, my trick is to wear a thin warm sweater (I like wool but I also like snuggly acrylic knits too. The fuzzier the better) and then a slightly heavier sweater on top. That covers everything. The DH has his own version of this – in the winter, he wears a knit vest with his wool suit. If it’s really cold or he has to spend a lot of time out of doors, he wears silk underwear and sock liners under his suit and a vest. If it’s totally brutal, he wears a thin wool pull over under his suit coat.

Shoes and boots. I realize this may sound like a ‘no, duh’ but this is another item that amazes me in terms of people’s negligence of it. I know there are a lot of people out there who do not wear shoes in the house. I also know people who go barefoot in the house. No matter what school of thought you hold, feet need to stay warm. Some people wear sneakers everywhere. Sneakers are not made to keep you warm. As a matter of fact, since they are meant to be worn while performing physical activity, they have built in means to allow warmth and moisture to escape. Even if you are inside the house, if you have cold floors, sneakers and cotton socks will not keep you warm. Better to wear slippers and wool socks than sneakers and cotton socks. (and no, I am not an agent of the Sheep Producers…) No matter where you live, unless you have radiant or copper pipes running through your floors, the floors are cold in the winter. Feet have the least amount of insulation of almost any other place on the body besides the hands. Put a good layered system between your feet and the floor: warm socks and slippers or shoes. The same goes for out of doors: Insulated boots and good warm socks. Looser boots that allow more than one layer of socks are better than tight boots – this helps the circulation in the feet. If your boots have leaks, get creative with keeping your feet warm and dry – putting your feet into plastic bags before you put on the boots does work. Take care of your boots – keep them greased up and polished.

Hands: mittens beat gloves every time but Bob Cratchet and his gloves with the ends of the fingers cut out had a good idea also. My son found that his hands got chilly when he was working at the computer at school – I made him gloves with shortened fingers. Mittens ARE more effective in terms of keeping hands warm but they are not the most elegant answer. If you want your gloves to be warmer, look for silk glove liners.

Wear a hat. I know this sounds totally Victorian, but people in the old days wore hats to bed for a reason and it was NOT to keep their perms looking nice. We lose a lot of heat through our heads. Wear a hat and not just outdoors. Sometimes, the most effective way to up the warmth and comfort factor is not to load on a sweater, it’s to put on a knit hat.
(photo at the top courtesy of Technology in Australia)

The photograph at the top is the outfit I made to wear as TMOB (The Mother of the Bride – for those uninitiated) when Daughter The Younger got married last summer. Aunt Toby is not an especially lacy person, but a formal version of a suit had a certain appeal – it had pieces that I could, with a little judicious matching later on, turn to other uses. The other thing is that Aunt Toby does not feel overwhelming amounts of enthusiasm for shopping in general – and shopping for ‘event’ clothing tends to bring on Code Seven Migraines, so I tend to put my sewing skills to work. Over the years, I have figured out what I have to do in order to make a pattern fit me – shorten the waist, raise the armscye, make the front bust area larger (the dreaded FBA – cue scary music), shorten the sleeves (Aunt Toby has arms that resemble T-rex in terms of length). So, I found a skirt pattern that worked and a jacket pattern that worked (the jacket that went with the skirt reminded me of Dracula, so I avoided that). The outfit is made out of brocade, which is a fabrice that has a good amount of heft to it.

(yes, the wedding was very lovely and everyone had a terrific time..thank you for asking)

So, here we are, almost a year later and Aunt Toby and the DH have their yearly local ‘event that passes for a big deal’. Not wanting to go shopping (anything to avoid shopping), I pulled out the wedding outfit and ruminated over the possiblities:
– Keep the jacket and make a dress to go with it: interesting, but this is a pretty formal affair; going through all the trouble to make a floor length dress for a one-time-only would not be a good use of time or money.
–Use the skirt and make a top that could be used for other events – now THIS had a lot of charm as far as I’m concerned, as we also have events at the December holidays that are fancy but not formal and with the right top, I could use it with either really nice pants or another long skirt I have.

So, choosing one of the colors in the brocade (one of the advantages of brocades is that they usually come with a bunch of colors woven in, so you can make a series of items to go with it and always look cordinated), to made a tunic out of Simplicity 2927, which is a great pattern out of the ‘Inspired by Project Runway’ series. Simplicity 2927 Being someone who has a certain inhuman sensitivity about the size of my biceps, I chose the 3/4 sleeve version and then fancied it up with some beading. I did line the body of the tunic because silk dupioni is not as heavy as one would think and I did not want any show through. The sleeves, I left alone and self-bound them rather than use the facings provided (I have a thing about facings – I think they make everything look like it was done in my 7th grade home ec class). The outfit was unusual at the dinner and reception and I received many compliments on it.

For the holidays I plan to wear the tunic with some nice black wool crepe pants I have in the closet already.

This is one of those roads to Economic Hell — we invariably end up with a closet full of stuff that doesn’t go with anything else and spend too much time staring into it hoping for inspiration. And then, we get disgusted and send bags full of stuff to local charities, having wasted our money. A couple of years ago, this changed for me when I stumbled upon something called SWAP.

SWAP stands for ‘Sewing With A Plan’. For non-sewers, we can also substitute another ‘s’ word for sewing, “Shopping With a Plan”. Although the whole thing started with a series of articles in an Australian sewing magazine, “Stitches”, in North America, the person to be given primary credit for turning this rather homely idea into a movement is the former owner of a Canadian fabric store named Julie Timmel (who has since retired), who ran a series of SWAP contests which proved so popular that it’s taken on legs and life of its own and now resides with another group of people entirely. Here are the original two posts that Julie Timmel ran discussing the concept:

SWAP1
SWAP2

Now, I admit that I have never ever done a SWAP; what I did (and what turns this into something that even non-sewers can take advantage of in terms of wardrobe and spending management) was to take out everything in my closet, spread it out and starting putting things that went together..together. Things that did not go with anything else became…orphans and I had to decide if they were so special or could be made into such an important contributor to the wardrobe that I would keep them. Anything that did not make that cut got contributed to a community clothing closet.

At the top are two items that I fell in love with. The skirt is really more of a turquoise or teal color and the jacket is more lemon. Both of these were bought on the ‘bargain’, “I love the color”, ‘gotta have it” bases. The best I could do with the yellow jacket for a long time was to pair it with navy blue slacks or a skirt. I had nothing else that would go. The teal skirt eventually got paired with a summer-weight aqua/teal jacket that got worn to death. They never really felt as if they were ‘pulling their weight’ in the closet. I had an enormous number of pieces of black clothing (which is the fashion cop-out since you can dress with a blinding hangover and still get it right if everything in the closet is black – no challenge there) but wanted to put more color into my wardrobe. I don’t work in an especially formal office in any case and I really do like to have some fun with color – I have one of those complexions that just looks deathly in black and I feel I look healthier with some color going on.

So, I made the decision to move the wardrobe on an incremental basis away from black and more toward these colors. This is really where being able to sew helps tremendously because I can never, ever find exactly what I want in the stores. Either it is the right color but the wrong size; or the right shape and size and the colors are all wrong. Especially now with the internet, sewists can pretty much find whatever they are looking for, in whatever fiber they want it.

Partial solution in the photograph: I found some wonderful knit in a white/yellow/brown/turquoise, which I made into a top and matching skirt. Now, I had matches for the teal skirt and the yellow jacket and I could use the top and the skirt together as a dress or each piece independently (though when I do that, I wash both together so that if there is any fading, it happens to both simultaneously). I also found a brown velveteen jacket that I purchased. I recently had a family event to go to and decided to expand that collection by making a turquoise wool gabardine dress and a silk tweed jacket that has several different colors of brown, beige and turquoise in it. I also got enough of that tweed to make a matching skirt so that I have a nice suit that is not black. What is also not seen in this photograph is a tan twill jacket that I made so that I have a brown jacket for summer.

Where do I go from here with this collection? Well, I don’t go off and buy anything. I sat down with this and asked myself this: Do I need anything else for the spring/summer/fall that can be part of this? If I did, where would I go?

If I were going shopping, what I would do with this collection at this point for summer would be to be on the lookout (either thrifting or hard core bargain shopping, which right now is pretty productive) for a couple of pieces to do more work with that silk jacket – another dress or a skirt or nice pair of slacks in brown or tan. That is it. Now, I don’t know what’s in the stores now and whether or not I could even find a dress in beige or a summer weight fabric in turquoise and beiges can be ‘iffy’ since the beige in this jacket is rather more toward the tan end rather than the grey end of beige. If I were a shopper, what I would do is put this list on my trusty “Look for” 3×5 card in my wallet and when I found something in a good hardwearing fabric and made well, at a decent price, I’d get it. But, having that list written down would be how I would manage this – I would have no ‘need’ for anything else and would have my ‘hunting assignment’ already set out for me. No need to go looking at or for anything else. I think that removes a lot of temptation once you have written it down like that.

As a sewer, though, the world is my oyster. What I’d look for to complete this list would be stretch cotton twill in the right colors and make a dress and skirt to go with that jacket. I already have the matching fabric so there is my sewing schedule for the summer already made out for myself. What I’d then have for that jacket is this:

Jacket and turquoise wool dress – fall/winter
Jacket and beige dress – spring/summer/fall
Jacket and matching skirt – spring/summer/fall suit
Jacket and beige skirt – spring/summer/fall

If I choose the right beige, I will also be able to wear the skirt and the dress with the brown velveteen jacket. And I’ll be able to wear the white/yellow/brown/turquoise knit top with both skirts as well. And the dresses can be worn on their own.

Triple play.

(If you are interested in where Sewing With A Plan is going now, see “6th Annual SWAP Contest” at
Stitchers Guild )

There are many things about being female that are just plain unfair. Women’s clothing many times does not come with pockets or the pockets are small and useless (and yes I know many women refuse to un-sew the openings because ‘it ruins the line’). Women’s shoes many times are built along the philosophical lines of Chinese footbinding. But my major beef (or bone to pick depending) has to do with simple shoe quality. No matter how expensive women’s shoes are, unless you are getting something like orthopedic shoes from your podiatrist (and those can be absolutely costly and we won’t discuss the fashion factor), or perhaps something like the penny loafers still handsewn by Sebago, you are getting a shoe that is held together with glue.

Ah, but you say, “Aunt Toby, I don’t care about that – they just talked to me…and asked me to buy them and take them home and love them…”

And Aunt Toby’s answer to that one is: “Poppycock – if you want to truly save money on clothing and shoes, you have to buy things that you can wear for a long time , can maintain and can get repaired if need be.”

When you buy shoes that are being held together with glue, with plastic heels that are covered with fabric or glued leather, the number of events that can turn those shoes into something that goes into the garbage can are many. Fabric and glue do not stand up to rain, sleet, snow, salt or commercial ‘ice melt’ products used on sidewalks. Driving a car in shoes built like this scuffs up the leather and fabric on the heels, and though they can sometimes be repaired using solvents and pulling the covering back down over the heel insert and regluing, many times the repair cannot be done so that they look really good – leather will only stretch so far; fabric doesn’t stretch well at all.

See the photograph above. The men’s shoes belong to the DH and are years old – the DH is a guy who has five suit or sportcoat/dress slacks outfits that he wears in rotation to work every day of the week, with dress shoes to match. He also is hard on his shoes and goes through the ball of the sole. These shoes probably cost, retail when he bought them, $125.00 several years ago. The DH always buys heavy leather shoes with leather linings and welted soles. What you are seeing here is a welted sole – this is a separate piece which is sewn in such a way that the sole sticks out a teensy bit from the shoe itself.

Repeat after me: Welted Soles Are Good. And the reason they are good is shown by the flipped over shoe in the photograph which shows the following: Welted Soles and Heels can be taken off by the shoe repair person and replaced…over and over and over again. As long as you have ‘the upper’ intact (that’s the part we think of as ‘the shoe’), you can still sew on another sole and hammer on another set of heels and Voila! The DH just got his soles and heels replaced; he basically has a practically new pair of shoes.

Let’s do the math:
Original Cost: $125.00
Age so far: 6 years
Number of times worn a week: 2
Number of times worn in current life: 2x52x6…………624.00
Number of times resoled and reheeled: 2, 1@$25 and the latest, @$35…$60.00
Maintenance: Cleaning and polishing on a regular basis.
So, total cost to wear to today’s date: $125.00 + $60.00 = $185.00
Cost per wearing: $185.00 divided by 624 wearings = $.296…..29.6 CENTS.

The lonely little green dress shoe there belongs to me and has a wraparound sole put on with industrial glue along with a heel unit that comes down into the sole, a pretty common design these days. That pair of shoes breaks just about every rule I’m going to state below with regard to shoe investment: They are olive green, a once trendy color. They were a bargain which I have not gotten much wearing from. I can’t get them repaired due to the sole design. They will probably end up in the trash.

With women’s glued shoes, all you need is one really nasty piece of weather the first time you wear them, or a mis-step into a pothole filled with slush and salt and boom! That one wearing is going to cost you the entire cost of the shoes. And how much did you spend on the past pair of dress shoes you got? OK…so you hold your nose and buy the Chinese made ones from the big chain place and you only paid $35.00 for them. But still – you wore them how many times before they fell apart, you got tired of them because they were out of fashion, or you decided they hurt? Unless you got 118 wearings out of them, they cost you more than the DH’s shoes cost him. And he still has these shoes with the brand new soles and heels on them which will last him another 2 years and another 208 wearings, which will lower the cost per wear to….22 cents per wearing. You can never catch up. Your per wearing cost for shoes is always going to be more…unless….

Unless you do certain things to
a) increase the lifetime wearability of your shoes
b) increase the lifetime fashion-ability and style of your shoes
c) monitor your shoe wear

Now, for me to tell women to go out and buy welted dress shoes is really sort of fruitless. Even if you lived in a place like New York and could find an actual custom shoe maker there (and there are several), you probably would not be able to get a welted shoe made on a dress heel last. You would get a shoe that fit you better. You would get a shoe that would have components that you wanted and at a quality you wanted, but you would probably end up with a glued shoe. So, how do you increase the lifetime wearability of your shoes?

1) Stop thinking of dress shoes as a shoe you wear all the time…in the rain…in the snow…in the salt. Dress shoes are what you wear when you get to the office or the party or whatever – but wear the tool for weather that was designed for muck, mire, rain and salt: boots. There are all sorts of really cute ‘Wellie’ type boots out there in crazy patterns and nice colors (and lots of sales now). Invest in a pair of boots – especially ones that have a removeable innersole. They will protect your feet – carry your shoes. This will instantaneously increase the wearability of your shoes.

2) When you buy shoes, buy leather shoes. Yes, I know there are folks who do not want animal hides touching their bodies. I accept that. But unless you are getting fabric shoes made from hemp (and there are those out there too), vegan shoes are made out of vinyl products which come from petroleum. I’m not going to get into the whole political and economic thing about petroleum based products here – what I AM going to talk about is foot health. It is not healthy to wear shoes that do not breathe. Your foot is made of skin – it breathes and needs another breathable item surrounding it to protect it. Fabrics breathe but are not terribly protecting or durable. Leather breathes. It is also something that you can protect and waterproof to a certain extent with the application of colored waxes called ‘shoe polish’ (remember THAT stuff?). I happen to think that the act of cleaning and polishing shoes is really neat – but then again, I am also someone who has very fond memories of sniffing mimeograph stencils when they were first handed out (something that I am sure accounts for some of my more odd personality quirks 45 years later). But polishing shoes protects them and that also increases the lifetime wearability, thus decreasing your cost per wearing.

3) Switch out your shoes; don’t wear the same shoes every day.

Increasing the lifetime fashionability and style of your shoes. How do we do this?
1) Pick basic styles in basic colors. I don’t care if you like national school bus chrome yellow or Tahitian blue in your clothing. Can you find yellow and turquoise shoes? You bet, especially if those colors are ‘in season’. But next season, boom…they are not, and into the trash those shoes will go. You’ve just increased your per wear cost exponentially and added more to a landfill someplace. But basic colors that you can wear with anything: luggage tan, cream/off white, black and brown. If you wear a lot of navy blue, you might think of getting a pair but the problem is that navy blue seems to be a color that hews to that old saw about Eskimos having 100 words for snow: The navy blue you have in your favorite dress or suit will probably never match what you see in the shoes…better to go with black shoes and let it go at that. I hate white shoes. Period. As for styles – go with basic stuff that goes with what you wear. If you dress formally for work, get pumps (or, ‘court shoes’ as they are called in the UK) with a heel that is comfortable for you. If you wear pants, you can either wear pumps or something flatter such as an oxford or loafer style. Expect to pay some good money for leather – buy something solid, with a good sole (not something like what is above that can’t be taken off) and don’t get funky heel styles (like a Louis Heel which is the leg-o-mutton sleeve of shoe-dom). Also, once you find a manufacturer with shoes that seem to fit you well, that means you have found someone with a ‘last’ which is good for your foot. Remember that manufacturer or manufacturers on a card in your wallet. These are your ‘go to’ shoe makers. Mine are Franco Sarto(tm), Aerosoles(tm) and Naturalizer(tm), all three of which seem to use a wider last, even on their B widths.

2)Don’t buy shoes on sale unless they are on your list of ‘I need’ – in terms of basic styles and colors. I do not care if they call to you like Snoopy’s chocolate chip cookies or the calls of Odysseus’ Sirens. You do NOT need Tahitian Blue strappy sandles for that one summer dress in your closet. Be tenacious. “I need a dark brown tie shoe with a two inch heel in leather.” There you go.

Monitoring shoe wear.
What happens to your shoes when you take them off when you get home? You ARE taking off your shoes when you get home, right…and changing into something else…a pair of sneaks or something else. If you have gotten them wet, are you just leaving them dripping in the front entrance on the rubber mat or are you drying them off, putting shoe trees in them or paper and putting them aside to dry (not on the hot air registers please)? When you take them off, just take 30 seconds to take a look at them – are they scuffed; do they need a polish; are the soles and heels ok? Don’t do what most of us do and throw them under the bed until the next time you drag them out and discover that they need attention. Take care of that now or put them with whatever you take to work tomorrow so that you can drop them off at the shoe makers on your way to get them repaired. The shoemaker is really your friend; these folks are many times true artists and have all sorts of magic tricks they can use to replace and repair. But they can’t do much if you leave things so long that the leather on the heel of those dress pumps is all scuffed up and rolled up the back of the heel insert. So, having maintenance done before the shoes are in terrible shape is a good thing to do.