Fifty years of buying shoes and I never once wrote to a shop about a pair. This is the exception
Fifty years of buying shoes and I never once wrote to a shop about a pair. This is the exception
Six things the Saskia Mary Jane heels get right that pretty shoes get wrong, from a woman who does not review shoes.
Pat Holloway · Customer · Leeds · 5 min read
Let me be plain about who is talking. I am Pat, I am 68, I live in Leeds with my husband Brian, and I have been buying shoes for fifty years without once writing to a shop about a pair. What I have done is fill the bottom of a wardrobe with the evidence. Pretty pairs that pinched by the second hour, sensible pairs that looked like sensible pairs, heels I have carried home in my hand more than once. So this is not a review. It is a woman who was wrong about a pair of shoes, saying so.
The pair I am writing about is called the Saskia, from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly making the ordinary things a bit lovelier for a few years now. I first saw them at the tea dance Brian and I go to at the church hall, on a woman who danced the whole afternoon in them and was still going when they stacked the chairs, and when the boutique later asked if they could put my letter up for others to read, I said yes, on the condition I could be completely honest in it.
Black Mary Janes, the proper vintage sort, a wide strap across the instep with a polished silver ring buckle, a low block heel, little teardrop cutouts at the side. Every other woman in that hall was in flat sensible shoes or quietly suffering in her good ones. Read on.
Here is what fifty years of shoe shops taught me. Shoes come in two piles. The pretty pile, the ones that look lovely at the table and come off under it by the second dance. And the comfortable pile, the ones your feet forgive and your mirror does not. I had done my years in both, and I had more or less settled into the second pile for good.
Pretty shoes that punish you, or comfortable shoes that apologise for you. Those were the options, and I had stopped arguing with them.
The Saskia is the first pair I have owned that is neither, and having worn them ever since they arrived, I can tell you it comes down to six things.
The day they came. I ordered them expecting to send them back. I did not.
They do not look like their price
They look like the shoes you remember proper shoe shops selling. The vintage Mary Jane shape, a soft finish that catches the light nicely, and that polished silver ring buckle sitting on the strap like a little piece of jewellery. I had them down as an expensive pair from one of those heritage makers, and I suspect the woman at the tea dance enjoyed letting us all think so. They sit by my front door looking dearer than anything else on the mat.
By the front door, ready to go out. They make the rest of the mat look underdressed.
My sister asked which shop in town I had bought them from. She did not believe the answer.
Brenda K., CastlefordThe heel is the sensible kind of pretty
The heel is a low block, about five centimetres, and it is wide all the way down, so you stand on something square rather than balancing on a point. It gives you the lift that makes a skirt hang properly, without the wobble that makes you reach for a rail. I danced on a polished church hall floor in mine, which is not a sentence I expected to write again, and I walked to the bus after. Steady the whole way.
On, with tights, on my own hall floor. A heel you can actually stand about on.
First heels in years I have worn from morning to evening. The block heel makes all the difference on hard floors.
Maureen D., GarforthThe strap does up to your foot, not to an average
The strap fastens with a real buckle, so you set it to your own instep rather than hoping your foot matches whatever the factory decided. Mine is set one hole looser on the left, because feet are like that, and once it is set the shoe stays put. No slipping at the heel, no gripping with your toes on the way down a step. You buckle them once in the morning and they get on with it.
The strap and that silver ring buckle. Set it once and it holds all day.
The buckle strap means they fit my narrow feet properly. No heel slip at all, which never happens for me.
Sheila P., KnaresboroughThere is room at the front, where it matters
The toe is rounded, with a roomier shape across the front of the shoe, and I would like that written on the door of every shoe shop in Leeds. No pointed front squeezing everything into a triangle, no going up a size and flapping at the heel to buy your toes some peace. Your foot sits flat and spread the way it wants to, and the shoe still looks neat and feminine from above.
At last a pretty shoe with a rounded toe. My toes are not crammed and I can wear them all day.
Valerie S., TadcasterThe little cutouts people take for a designer touch
Along the side, just in front of the heel, there is a small fan of teardrop shaped cutouts, three of them, neatly stitched round the edges. It is the sort of detail you notice on the second look, and other people notice it too. Two women at church have asked me about the shoes, and both of them pointed at the cutouts when they did. It is what stops them being just another plain black shoe.
The little teardrop details make them look far more expensive than they were. I get comments every time I wear them.
Pauline R., SelbyThey go with everything I own, most of the year
Black goes with everything, and the shape goes with everything else. Dresses, skirts, my good trousers, they all look more finished with these underneath. Because the shoe is closed at the toe and heel it carries on into the cooler months when sandals are put away, with tights or without. They make them in burgundy, tan and navy as well, in sizes UK 3 to 8.5, and I have already gone back for the burgundy, which tells you everything really.
I bought the black and went back for the tan two weeks later. They go with every skirt and dress I own.
Christine L., YeadonThe Saskia, against the shoes you have been buying
You can find a black heel for thirty odd pounds anywhere. I know, because the bottom of my wardrobe is full of the evidence. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
Pretty at the table, agony by the second hour
Skinny heels that wobble on every surface
One fixed fit that suits an average foot
Pointed toes that squash everything into a triangle
Look exactly what they cost
A low steady block heel, about five centimetres
A wide strap with a polished silver ring buckle
Buckles to your own instep, either foot
A rounded toe with room across the front
Look a great deal dearer than they are
About the price
The Saskia heels are £30.95, down from £62.00.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that this is the run being cleared in the sale to make room for the autumn stock, and once a size is gone, it is gone. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that a mark-down like that is usually where I start asking what is wrong with something, and after all the wearing I have given mine, I have not found it.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real people rather than robots, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.
On the hall table shelf, under the keys. Handy, because they go out more than I do.
If your good shoes come off under the table by the second dance, and you are tired of choosing between your feet and your mirror, this is the pair I would buckle onto your feet myself, while your size is still there. Stop dithering and go and look.
Pat
THE SASKIA MARY JANE HEELS
- Classic Mary Jane strap with a polished silver ring buckle
- Low steady block heel, about five centimetres
- Rounded toe with a roomier shape across the front
- Teardrop cutout detail at the side
- Closed shape that carries on into the cooler months
- In black, burgundy, tan and navy · sizes UK 3 to 8.5
- Free UK delivery
Sale on now. The first autumn stock is already going.