My favorite pair of shoes for the past two years have been a pair of magenta patent AK Anne Klein flats that I bought at Piperlime for $80. This was pretty expensive for me at the time – I was just getting into fashion and style stuff – but it paid off in this case. I wore them at least once a week, sometimes twice, in summer and winter, and for the past six months I’ve been wearing them despite the fact that I’ve actually worn a hole in one of the heels. But at some point you have to let go, and so for several months I’ve been looking for a replacement. Criteria: Flat, shiny, in a fun color that I can wear with a lot of things, and fairly inexpensive. I’m poor, people. I’ve worked only four days a week most of the year and was on furlough for August. Shoes over $100 weren’t happening.

It took forever to find anything; AK Anne Klein has an almost identical shoe this year, but it’s in yellow, which isn’t a favorite color of mine. There was a dearth of deep pinks and greens. A lot of purple, which I love, but nothing quite right – either was too lavender (I own some lavender peep toes already) or not patent, or absolutely perfect and $180 or something. I was beginning to wonder if I was going to need to tape over the hole or something.

Okay, not really. But still, it was dire.

Then someone in the comments of this post recommended Marais USA, and I went to check them out. They don’t have much in the way of selection – they’re a small, NYC-based firm that’s only been around for a few years – but what they do have is really cute, and I immediately began lusting after all three of their flats, especially in the Suit color. When the Mulberry Mary Jane went on sale at Urban Outfitters, I immediately bought them.

The shoes.

They were cute, they fit, and when they arrived, I wore them the very next day with tights and a black dress, and they looked good! With one minor issue: I hadn’t been walking for five minutes before the glue holding the heels on started coming undone.

What I should have done, of course, was ship them back to UO for a refund, but dammit, I really liked these shoes, it had taken me months to find a pair that I actually would wear, and I needed new flats and didn’t want to spend another three months looking again. So I Googled a cobbler, found one literally around the corner from my office, and took them in with me the next day, where we had the following conversation:

Me: The heels are coming off these shoes.

Cobbler: They just started doing this? You should take them back.

Me: Um…*mumbles something semi-coherent about final sales or lost receipts*

Cobbler: …Okay. So you want me to just glue them back on, or put on new ones?

Me: New ones, I think.

And fifteen dollars and two days later, I had them back, with new heels nailed on. I’ve worn them three times since; I might even wear them again today when I go out to buy my contact lenses, so in my mind the extra money was worth it. Not sure I’ll buy from Marais again, of course; the shoes are cute (especially the two-tone flats coming out this month) and I like supporting local start-ups, but…I don’t want to spend an extra $15 every time. My cobbler already thinks I’m nuts.

I guess we’ll see.