It’s not that I woke up one day and suddenly decided to embrace the minimalist lifestyle. No, the dye was cast after the innocuous, or so we thought, decision to watch a documentary on the local on-demand-channel. We chose to view “Food, Inc.”, a movie we knew nothing about.
So we watched. My husband observed the movie from a more detached vantage point while I watched with increasing horror and dismay. Having been a vegetarian for over thirty years, by the end of those 93 minutes, I had adopted a vegan diet and a leather-free life-style. It was like a light-switch. One minute, egg/dairy eating leather-wearing vegetarian, the next minute, not.
The next day, I went to my closet and began pulling things out.
Good-bye salmon-colored designer sandals with the Lucite-bubble heel; good-bye taupe knee-high, western-style boots; good-bye aqua-hued, faux-crocodile mules; good-bye woven red leather chunk-heel sandals; good-bye black maryjane flats with the leather flower on the ankle strap which I had purchased at a summer sale while in Paris. Good-bye dark chocolate brown boots with the sharply-tapered toe.
Good-bye red leather gloves lined with gray fur.
Good-bye numerous leather coats and suede jackets and elegant handbags and turquoise padded opera-style wallet that snapped shut with a resounding click.
It was with a mixture of relief (mostly) and regret (a twinge) that I donated all of these items to Dress for Success, a nonprofit group which provides professional clothing to help low-income women successfully enter the workforce. It took more than one trip.
It was done. And I looked in my closet, and could breathe more easily. And then I caught sight of a light brown box. In the corner. Barely noticeable. With the words “Christian Louboutin” on the lid.
I pulled out the box, removed the box top, and saw the beige suede pointy-toed ankle boots with the decorative criss-cross detail and the 3-1/2” spiky heels. And the iconic red soles. Barely scratched from use, because I had only worn them two times. And I knew they had to go. Too dressy for the work place, I needed to find a place other than Dress for Success for them to reside.
So, I put the boots on e-bay. It was my first attempt at selling anything on this site. I felt ambivalent about the thought of profiting from the death of an animal. Perhaps this was evident in some way, because after two days, there was no sign of interest. So I lowered the asking price by 85%. Still, no sale. I took them off of e-bay.
Next, I offered them, gratis, to my very stylish neighbor. She was was convinced that they would not fit, but suggested I bring them over in the hope of giving them to another friend. Before calling the friend, my neighbor tried them on. They fit. She did a little dance of joy. These boots will never touch the feet of her friend.
And this is how I came to give away my nearly-new Christian Louboutin boots.
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