Comfy dress shoes that look great
Dear Answer Angel Ellen: As I’m aging, as gracefully as I can, I simply must have dress shoes with some type of heel or wedge. None of the designer brands or well-known brands are even thinking about a woman past 50! I cannot feel completely attired without a good-looking shoe, formally or informally. Why don’t designers like Ralph Lauren, Anne Klein, Nine West, Jimmy Choo, Stuart Weitzman, Cole Haan and more of the shoe manufacturing world realize a huge segment of the female population do not wear 4-inch spikes and we continue to dress professionally?
— Barbara E.
Women of every age yearn for a good-looking, comfortable shoe. I sure do. I gave up on those 4-inchers long ago.
But I disagree that you can’t find high-end or better-brand dress shoes you can wear everywhere all day. This is especially true now that block heels are back in style. A roll through Bloomingdale’s website (bloomingdales. com) turns up good-looking low-heel shoes at a wide array of price points,
Dear Barbara:
including Weitzman, Jimmy Choo, Tory Burch, Kenneth Cole and more. Nordstrom’s fabled shoe department has a great selection including Cole Haan, Calvin Klein, Roger Vivier, Eileen Fisher, Gucci, Ferragamo and Bandolino (wedges!). Take another look. Your favorite styles are making a comeback!
Dear Answer Angel Ellen:
I recently cleaned out my closet — no small undertaking! It’s so organized and easier to find things. But my question is, I have about 15 pairs of jeans of all kinds — flare, crop, skinny, harem, jeweled, straight, light, medium, etc. I have no clue how to organize them to find what I want quickly. My closet isn’t big enough to hang them all up. I tried folding them and putting them on a shelf, folded and stacked in two rather high piles. But then I have to go through the piles to find what I want, pull it out and dislodge other pants in the pile in the process. This is the final step in closet rescue and I’m stumped!
— Pamela J.
Dear Pamela: We are living in the Organize-Your-Stuff Age and a huge array of companies are striving to sell you products to help contain the chaos. For jeans storage, here are three basic ways to go.
Pants hangers with clips (the method I use; works for skirts too). They use one space on the clothes rod and hang your pants/ skirts in vertical tiers using clips (amazon.com, three hangers, $16.99 and up). A no-clips variation to look at (I’m not a fan): “devesanter pants hangers space savings jean hangers” (amazon.com, two five-pants hangers, $12.79 and up).
Open-top boxes (often mesh or stiff covered cardboard) with dividers to hold five to seven pairs of folded jeans per box, stored on the floor, a shelf or in a deep drawer. An example is Fixwal brand jeans storage, four boxes (each holds five pairs of jeans) (amazon.com, $23.99).
Cubby holes that hang from the closet rod. I’ve tried these and stiff, high-quality fabrication is essential or they sag quickly. To see the concept, check out the Container Store 3-compartment Hanging Wide Closet Organizer (containerstore. com, $17.99). A warning: They hog 12 inches of your precious space on the closet rod.
Beware! The variations and prices on all three are confusing and will make your head spin. None of them are a perfect solution.