Boots - Less is More

One of my oldest friends has asked me to find something, and who am I to refuse?

The opposite of wider wellies ... narrower boots for those of us with chicken legs !!! yes the rest of me continues to expand, however those chicken shins ... well they make a nice pair of boots look like wellies !!!!!!!

I'm supressing the urge here, to say "what have you got to complain about?" - we all have bits of our bodies that we hate, or which - as here - are just a pain in the arse to dress swelegantly.  And I truly wouldn't want a pair of boots that stuck out beyond the width of my calf.

Okay, so - the first thing is to say that the sites that specialise in wide calf boots also cater for narrower legs.  Duo are the market leaders and their prices can be high - but they currently have a sale and you should be able to pick up a pair of boots for around £100 - in calf sizes down to a teeny 30cm.  This boot is £140, but I've chosen it for two reasons: the length is over-the knee - this will draw attention to a more shapely thigh, and the horizontal straps will give an impression of width.  They also buckle behind the knee for a guaranteed close fit.  The dramatic and sexy effect of the length is diffused by the practical heel - and the overall impression is very stylish.  Think a groomed Kate Moss.

There are other calf-width boot specialists, but I've been let down by two separate companies in the past so some kind of recommendation is in order, and the Fitted Boot Store comes with a recommendation from Auntie Gok himself.  They have much less choice than Duo, but a rather fabulous selling point: they make their boots to order, and take your ankle measurement as well as your calf to ensure a glove-like fit all the way up - particularly important for slimmer legs where baggy ankles look very obvious. I've chosen this pair in tan leather at a promotional price of £100 (but nothing on this site is priced over £125 - and that includes the made-to-measure service).  Brown is a better colour for wearing with jeans tucked in, and being lighter than black, it will add the impression of width, as will the horizontal seam and the fact that the boot should stop at the widest part of the calf. This company also start at a 30cm calf circumference.

If you don't want to order from one of these specialists (you might want to try the boots on, and although Duo has some facility for this, it's not easy) what can you do?  Firstly, it might seem obvious, but shop around.  The boots available in Topshop are likely to be slimmer fitting than those in Next, for example, because their customers only go up to a size 14.  If you can afford to splurge, the top labels make very narrow boots to cater for their size zero clientele.  But even within stores, be aware that sizing will vary between styles.  It may be worth trying boots that lace up the front, Victorian-style, or that are soft suede or fabric cinched in by criss-crossed straps.  Over the knee styles might be an option if your thighs are a more regular size, as they only need to fit well at the top of the boot - a looser fit on the calf will be disguised by a thicker, more rigid leather.  Obviously you can tuck in your trousers, but you should also be aware that wearing heels changes the shape of the calf, elongating the muscle and giving you a smaller circumference.  Flat boots will be a better fit.

Wellies revisited...

 
Last February we had snow, and I posted about finding wellies to accommodate the larger calf - with your indulgence, I'll post that again here, but with updates based on a test of my newly purchased boots in the snow today.  If you remember the original post, just scroll to the end for the new stuff.

I don't often need to go places where my feet will get wet. Other than the shower, that is. But one ought to own a pair of wellies - this much has been evident today - when surely I would have frolicked with unbridled energy in the snow (as opposed to staying in my cosy bed all day) had I only owned a pair of good old gum boots.

I did have a pair. They were £6 in Tesco's kids department several years ago. I eventually pressed them into employ on one weekend, at last year's Endorseit festival, and I was jolly glad of them in the Somme-like conditions. By the end of the weekend though, I'd sliced them down the back (because it's one thing getting your legs in; losing all feeling in your feet due to constricted blood supply is quite another), and eventually threw them away on the way home, in a motorway service station bin, because our car was rammed to the gunnels, and the boots had doubled in size thanks to having half a Dorset field clinging to them.

So now I am bootless. It's quite discomfiting to discover myself lacking in clothing or footwear for any occasion, so I've been looking on the internet for my next pair of wellies. Of course, if I do buy some, they won't be delivered before the snow disappears... but I'll be ready if it happens again, goshdarnit!

But my word - buying wellies which will accommodate the larger calf is harder, and in some cases more costly than buying lovely leather boots from Duo. Who knew?

Purveyors of Serious Wellingtons, Hunter, stock a larger calf size in their more boring styles, but prices start at £50 - rising to £240, and the most exciting colour in the wide fit styles is black. There are other serious brands selling serious wellies - mostly for horsey types - but the only brand selling purpose-made, wider-fit wellies that don't look eye-gougingly dull are Jileon Ltd. Jileon are welly specialists who stock loads of cute and glam welly designs at around the £25 mark. Sadly, only one pretty pattern makes it to the wide-fit style, but it's a versatile black-and-polka-dot boot (above), which should please many. However, for some reason, for the larger fit they nearly double the price - to £44.99. Even then, I was tempted... but sadly, their smallest size is a 5. Tsh! Back to the drawing board.

I should probably point out that Jileon stock two other 'wide fit' styles - which cost £19.99/£32.99, but they are that ubiquitous muddy green colour. They'd have to be free to find a place in my wardrobe...

Another welly-specialist is Funky Wellies - and the name sounds promising. Their neoprene-lined range is supposed, according to their blog, to be more capacious around the calf. They have a cute pink floral boot, but I rather love the royal blue ones patterned with cars and camper vans. I don't love them to the tune of £45.95, though - even though they have them in my size. Lakeland Welly Workshop do a cute daisy boot with handles for £25, which they say is good for wider calves - but seem to have very few sizes in stock.

So what, then. Well the choices seem to be one of two: buy a pair of sensible wellies in sludge green or black; or go for something other than a standard welly. Plenty of retailers sell ankle-height wellies, which will fit - but you can't exactly tuck your trousers into them. I know serious outdoorsy types who reckon wellies are for fools anyway, and would encourage me to buy some stout walking boots and waterproof gaiters. Quite apart from the cost, walking boots seem to only come in ugly colours, and I guess I'm just too shallow. And that's before I even contemplate wearing 'waterproof gaiters'. There is a compromise of sorts in low-calf boots, epitomised by the Crocs above (£25-£35). Pretty colours, yes - and if you buy the imitation ones on ebay they can be cheap as you like... but they're truly very odd looking. Maybe I'll wait it out...

Proof that I did wear wellies once. Even if they were the most sensible part of my outfit...

Update:

So, despite the recent Arctic weather not really troubling us that much in London, I felt frustrated that there might be other occasions when I would want to frolic in the snow, and be denied due to my inadequate footwear. The situatation in terms of what's available hasn't really changed, but Jileon did have size 4 boots in stock, which is close enough - allowing for two extra pairs of woolly socks, so I bit the bullet and shelled out close to fifty quid (including delivery) for a pair of spotty wellies.

No sooner had I placed my order than a friend sent me the following report:

I bought some of those and the strap on the side broke as soon as I put them on. I was really unimpressed with them, the soles were very thin too.

I never got round to sending them back so I might stick them on ebay.

I hope you like yours, I guess it depends what you want them for but I knew the thin soles would make walking round festivals very uncomfortable.


Which was discouraging to say the least, so I awaited their delivery with some trepidation, and as soon as  opportunity afforded itself, I gave them a good old test.

Look - they match my diary!

They're certainly spacious.  I have large calves, even for my size, and they had no problem accommodating them, plus three pairs of socks, and my turned up, wrapped-round bootcut cords.  I reckon these would easily fit up to a UK dress size 26 - perhaps even larger.  The straps on the side aren't terribly heavy-duty, it's true.  I used them to hold the sides in place after I decided how much folding the gussets needed; you wouldn't want to use them to actually pull the sides in snugly.

So I set off, first on pavements - where the slight heel (half an inch) gave me more traction on slippery surfaces than my trainers have done - and then over the parkland of Peckham Rye.  The snow wasn't super-deep: perhaps two and a half inches in places, but after about half a mile (and then a couple of hundred meters more on pavement again) I reckon I got a sense of what they're be like to wear.  I found them very comfortable. Perhaps it was all the socks, but the soles didn't feel thin to me at all.  At one point I wasn't sure if they were leaking ever so slightly at the heels - it may have just been the cold - but the sensation didn't last long, and when I got home my socks were dry.  I liked them.  I think for a pair of wellies they're too expensive, but at least I have a pair now, and can go festivalling, snowballing or puddlejumping with the best of them for, hopefully, many years to come.

Back with boots

So I hope you've all missed your dose of Swelegance the last week or so. My birthday celebrations ran into a hellish week at work and a night at the theatre; with one thing and another, I've been too busy or exhausted to blog.

But shopping marches on, the sales are ending, and we still need to dress, and as this weather is making obvious, end of season bargain boots will get plenty of wear before summer.

I've mentioned Duo before, and their sale has taken an even bigger turn for the bargainous. Sale prices start at only £32 (and go up to £90) for winter boots in calf sizes up to 50cm. Each of the work-smart boots above costs less than £40, but there are also biker, Victorian lace-up, even cowboy styles and pretty colours to be had. If you are concerned about having large calves, though, you'll want to avoid the two styles below. The first is a pretty shade of pink, but hard to wear on dirty winter streets, and besides which, pale shades make everything look bigger. The other is a gorgeous, wearable bottle green, but that Romanov-esque frogging draws far too much attention to the horizontal line. Horizontal lines make you look wider. Avoid, avoid.

The good thing about the Duo site is that you can search by size - in this case foot and calf size. It's distressing in the shops when you find a style you like but your size isn't in stock. Internet shopping should be able to easily avoid that disappointment, and it's particularly important in the case of retailers who stock a myriad of size combinations - like a bra supplier, or indeed a calf-fit boot store. Infuriating, then, when Plus in Boots - an e-retailer also specialising in calf-fit boots, fails to do so.

Plus in Boots is a much smaller concern than Duo, with a much more limited line. But they too have a sale on, and so it's worth navigating their slightly irritating site, where knee boots are unnecessarily separated from calf boots and you must click into every style to see the colours available and if it still comes in your size. Sale boots here are all at either £50 or £60, so priced in the middle of Duo's sale. I like the black riding style boot above, and the gorgeous teal suede calf boots - both £50, and well worth dealing with the awkward site.

Bargain Boots!

Just a quickie before I head cross-country to the next stage of the family festivities: there's a sale on at Duo boots. For the uninitiated, Duo specialise in Calf fitted boots - I believe they cater for ladies with overly slender pins, but more relevantly, they are the bee's knees in making boots for larger calves.

They do have stores - but they started their buisness online, and have detailed instructions on how to measure yourself for the right fit. I've never splashed out - until today, when I picked up the impossibly smart Imperia boots above for £110.

Prices start at £60. Treat yourself.

More Shoes

There are some pretty good discounts in the Kurt Geiger website sale at the moment. Here are my top picks:

Only in sizes 40 and 41 (or I'd buy them) but these pink sculptural beauties by Agent Provocateur are reduced from £280 to £69. Bedroom shoes. Yum. Speaking of sculpture - how about these Kurt Geiger bobbly heels? They're a bit Barbarella, and reduced from £200 to £79 - sizes 37 and 38 only.

But we can't always wear such stilts, and there are some very practical work shoes in the sale. If you don't have a pair of red mary-janes (shame on you), and are size 36, 40 or 41 snap up these beauties by KG (the diffusion label) reduced from £90 - £39. Also available in black patent (in the inconceivable event that you don't have any black mary janes) size 37 only. In the pink, these pyramid-heeled shoes - also KG would look ace with black or better purple tights (£90 - £39) and also come in black and vivid sunflower yellow. Lastly I love the chunky stylings of these KG pewter mary janes - they'd look fab under trousers, and I belive the wide banding and rounder toe will help larger feet look smaller. Wide range of sizes here, and they cost £39, reduced from £85.

Lastly boots. There are some really good discounts on boots in the sale - worth a look if you have the kind of calves that allow you to buy boots off the peg. That said, not all styles of boots are out for the rest of us. Biker boots, coming not so far up the calf, are more accommodating. I love these, in size 37 only, by KG. £150 reduced to £89. I'm also fond of these Victorian style brown lace-front boots. Sizes 37, 38 and 41 - the laces allow you to ease the fit a certain extent (or indefinately if you buy longer laces and colour match your tights to the tongue of the boot.) £320 reduced to £79 - which is amazing - from the main Kurt Geiger label.

There are dozens of styles of shoe and boot in the sale, but the website handily allows you to search by size. Happy shopping!