A big-footed girl's best friend (Doctor Martens)

Member Name: Walli10

Product:	Doctor Martens
Date:	14/05/01 (330 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Last forever

Disadvantages: The indie-kid thing

There is but one part of the body, pretty much, on which it is impossible to have plastic surgery: your feet. I know this because it's the one cosmetic operation that I would pay anything to undergo. Since I was fairly small I have had very large feet, which to mine and my mother's dismay continued to grow enthusiastically as I did. Shoe shopping trips became, at a very early age, a nightmare: try finding school shoes in adult sizes or, these days, nice girlie shoes in my current size, a whopping nine. I have spent many, many shopping trips trying to force my feet into a size 8 I really really liked, as the fashion police in this country have decreed that for a woman to have size nine feet is simply Not Allowed.

A few years ago, however I gave in. Enough of feeling like one of the ugly sisters every time I needed a new pair of shoes. Enough of pinching and rubbing, of hobbling along ín a foul mood pretending I was perfectly all right: it was time to return to an old favourite. Now I look back, I wonder exactly why it took me so long to rediscover the doc marten, a shoe and boot without which, when I was fifteen, you were simply not considered a proper teenager. But after a brief flirtation with mens shoes (which almost always still look stubbornly and unattractively like mens shoes on me), it seemed I had no other choice.

So, it was off to the big DM store in Covent Garden, tho you'll probably get a better deal if you do things the traditional way and head to Covent Garden Market. But I wanted to see what the full range was like these days and so I headed to the flagship store. Two things struck me. DMs are really expensive these days: the shoes start at £50 ish and they come now in more forms and colours than I could ever imagine, to the point that lots don't even look like doccers any more. There are ones like Kickers, ones like Timberlands, customised ones with drawings all over them, the classic steel-toe cap side by side w
ith sandals... the list goes on and on. Nevertheless, I was instinctively drawn to the classics: the eight-hole black DM boot with the distinctive yellow stitching, and the slightly more subduded but equally recognisable 6 hole shoe. Now, I am assuming here that you know what DMs look like - if you don't, the pic at the top of the page shows the classic boot and all you have to know about the shoes is that they're less obvious but just as tough.

Now, I did try on the boots, I must confess. But when I looked at my feet, I was sixteen again, and it was not a feeling I liked. I felt like I'd have to go home and dig out my Stone Roses and James t-shirts, my old black leggings, my goth skirt, dye my hair an unnatural shade of orange and scowl a lot to accessorise them properly and frankly, that wouldn't go down too well at work. So call me old and boring and conservative, but I went for the plain, matt-black shoes. And started wearing them, at which point I remembered another vital thing about doccers, which is that they absolutely KILL.

Now, in my experience all new shoes put up a bit of a fight when you first wear them and have to be walked into submission before they agree to fit properly and be comfortable. Doccers, however, are the spoiled teenagers of the shoe world: they will strop and argue and murder your feet to within an inch of your endurance. Just as you feel they should be getting more comfortable, you'll find them pinching somewhere new, and as you hobble down the street you'll wonder why you ever bought the damn things.

It was at this point I remembered a ritual we used to have at school: everyone who bought a new pair of doccers had to bring them to school, where we'd clear the classroom and everyone would jump up and down on them and kick them around as part of the breaking in process. This was partly because there was little uncooler than brand new DMs, but also because it did help soften t
hem. In my case, my new pair hurt so much that after a month or so I gave up and they went to the back of my wardrobe for the summer. But the following winter I had my annual problem of no available winter shoes, so out they came again for another bout.And this time, they submitted fairly easily - and my perserverance was rewarded, because from that day on they became quite simply the most comfortable pair of shoes I have ever owned, and now I absolutely live in them. Because they're so tough, they hardly even show wear and tear, I never polish them, they're cool enough to wear out but conservative enough for offices and maybe even interviews - in short, my perfect shoe.

And I know from past experience that now they've decided to co-operate they'll last forever. I had a pair of boots once that lasted a whopping nine years - six years on their previous owner who gave them to me, and another three on my tootsies - both of us wearing them constantly. Impressive, huh? So while they may be expensive and painful initially, they will repay your investment of time and agony in spades, and for this I cannot recommend them highly enough.

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