Monday, January 28, 2008

The Great Quest For Synthetic Boots

Yesterday my friend and I went into the city on a hunt for new boots for my friend. She is vegetarian and therefore (quite rightly) will not wear leather. You would think that it would be relatively easy to find boots made of a synthetic material given the abundance of cheap shops that are in existence but it proved harder than I had expected.
The problem is that the so called ‘cheap’ shops – George, Dorothy Perkins, New Look, have all started to use leather for their shoes. This is a good thing for most people, after all, if you are going to buy cheap shoes you feel you are getting more of a bargain if the £20 shoes are made of leather.
So we searched everywhere. The task was further compounded by the need for the boots to have a fairly low heel and not too much of a point. All my immediate ideas came up with leather or styles that were not suitable. Until at last we ventured into the old lady’s paradise that is BHS. This is not a store I often frequent as I have seldom seen anything in there that I like. On the clothes front, that had not changed. But the shoes? Practically everything was manmade and in the sale. The boots my friend settled on were knee high and were marked down to £25 from £35. When we got to the till they came up as £17.50 which was even better. And I’d just been saying how I love it when you get to the till and the item comes up cheaper than the price tag says.

6 comments:

  1. Wow, what a challenge!

    I'm glad she finally got something - there's nothing worse than coming home from shoe-hunting empty handed! (although our bank managers would disagree!)

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  2. Thanks for the tip! I've been wrestling with my conscience over wearing leather and it is so hard to find decent synthetic boots (the ones I got from Barratts are already crumbling at the heel), but now I'll have to give BHS a bash!

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  3. It IS hard to find vegan shoes that aren't crap of a billion bucks from someone like Stella McCartney!

    Hey, I saw this and thought of you!

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  4. Elisabeth: LOL! I know what you mean. If you set out to buy shoes, you want to make sure you buy shoes! Great to have you back.

    Bec: Glad I could be of help! I'll report back on the quality of these boots once they've been worn a few times.

    Allie: Thanks for the link, I'll have to enter!

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  5. Have you checked out http://www.vegetarianshoesandbags.com/ ? Trendy AND affordable shoes, and they offer free shipping on orders over 75.00!

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  6. Thanks for the link Michelle, I'll pass it on.

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