I’m always surprised when I like something by Kate Spade, because Kate Spade is not generally considered Real Fashion.  Received fashionista wisdom has it that Kate Spade is for people who wear Juicy Couture and carry Coach bags with logos, i.e., people who think they are fashion people but are, in fact, dental hygienists.*

It ain’t necessarily so.

I have a much beloved pair of red patent leather heels that I can clomp around in for twelve hours that are Kate Spade and they’re terrific. That being said, whenever people ask me who made them, I answer in that same bashful voice usually reserved for admitting my cute prom date was my cousin (he wasn’t. My cousin I mean. He was cute though.  Miss Plumcake doesn’t do ugly.)

That being said, I have warm feelings about both these:

This is what I call a First Lady Shoe (and I’m charmed by the “film” treatment of the bow.)  It doesn’t look like much on the screen, but you’ll find yourself reaching for these again and again for years and as long as they’re in season, they’ll be in style.

I’m a big proponent of the nude shoe, and I know some folks aren’t, but for when you want to elongate the leg and look polished without adding another serious element to your outfit, these are perfect.  The Gracie slingback from Kate Spade (above) reminds me very much of the heyday of Valentino and Ferragamo, before the tyranny of black shoes trampled the nude neutral.

For another, more contemporary sexier take,  check out the Gianna pumps (currently almost 25% off at Endless):

Usually I approach anything snug around the ankle with an appropriate quantity of fear and trembling.  While I do not have “cankles” my ankles are delicately turned in perhaps a more substantial way than the average woman’s so I need a strap that’s a bit more generous in nature.

My red Spades have ankle straps and they are the easiest, most generous straps I’ve ever used, so I can buckle down in the beginning of the day and loosen up as my afternoon progresses (read: no pump fat.)

These remind me a bit of the lingerie inspired Diors from couture last year (which I loved) but are drastically less expensive.

*Please do not put me on some sort dental hygienist death list. I love you all. Also I floss regularly. Also also, I agreed to go out on a blind date with the moron son of my favorite hygienist, who truly was an idiot (btw: DON’T tell someone your son is a professional cyclist when in actuality he’s a 35 year old guy who still plays with BMX bikes in his sweatpants) which I think is going way above and beyond the call of dental health.

Hello my little butternuts, how’s every little thing? Yes, it’s time for your weekly humpletter featuring ten new Plumcake-approved tidbits of deliciousness, mostly on sale!

It’s actually a fairly slow week for sales thanks to the swing back from Memorial Day, so we’re doing something a little different.   One of the things I hate hate HATE is when people I know copy my personal style –which is pretty specific– just a little too closely. It’s awkward for everyone involved. I’ll never forget that day years ago when I walked into church to find some sweet but terribly misguided Young Thing wearing what can only be described as a Plumcake costume.

In the parlance of my people, “I liketa died.”

That being said, I thought it might be fun –and I invite you all to play along in the comments– to actually CREATE a Plumcake costume using the sales this week.  Create your own costume in the comments field, just don’t worry if it takes a few minutes to post. It might get caught in the pending filter.

First up are these Original Ray Ban Wayfarers in dark tortoise shell, on sale at Lord and Taylor using code FRIENDS to take 25% off your entire purchase. I never leave my house without my torties, which are just as cool as the traditional black ones but a bit more sophisticated.

These are timeless timeless timeless and perfect for either sex, so if your father is still wearing those tragiculous Blu-Blockers, why not buy him a pair of Wayfarers?  He’ll look like  an Italian movie star (white loafers not included.)

And if I’m never without my Wayfarers I’m never ever without my Hermes scarf. In fact, you could probably execute a fairly reputable Plumcake costume with just the scarf and the sunnies, plus a pair of vintage clip ons.

Pictured here is my absolute favorite foulard from my not-inconsiderable collection. It’s called Les Rivieres de Babel and although I have it in the aqua, there is precisely ONE of these available for purchase  from Potero (on sale too, it is to weep), so get it quick. It’s the only scarf I’ve ever paid a premium for and the photos simply do NOT do it justice. So pretty. So SO pretty.  When a woman d’une certain age showed up fresh off the plane from Paris with it wrapped around her neck, I fell in love and proceeded to hairlip hell until I located one and purchased it with much whimpering of bank account and a month of meal planning that involved the phrase “beans and toast” more often that I typically find ideal.  And you know what? Worth. Every. Penny.

And of course one good turn of Hermes deserves another: the Hermes Bolide in brown box calf.  Again, there’s only one of them, but it’s at 63% off retail and in great condition. Of course as with all Hermes bags, it is entitled to the legendary spa, where loved bags are buffed, primped and polished back to new. Now in the spirit of full disclosure: I don’t own a Bolide, I have a Birkin which I received as a break up gift (sorta) and have used exactly once, but for all the folderol over the Birkin being il handbag di tutti handbags, I’d kinda rather have the Bolide.

Moving from the screamingly expensive to the cheap and cheerful, I mentioned earlier you could compose a pretty decent Plumcake costume with just the scarf, sunglasses and a pair of vintage clip on earrings.

I couldn’t tell you how many pairs of vintage earbobs I own. Hundreds probably. I might even know where a few of them are (I always carry some sparklies in my purse in case I need to put them on in a flash, and usually a few pair at the office, in the car…wherever)

It is a shameful truth that, like snails leave slime and skunks leave stink, I leave a trail of  earrings wherever I roam.  I’ve tried to fix it, but to no avail. I almost always find them again eventually, but in case I don’t, I really hate to invest too much.

I’m a sucker for figural earrings, or something with a little hint of whimsy, like these floral ear clips on clearance from La Vintage, which will set you back a measly 17 smackaroos.

These little darlings measure about 3/4″ and are just about exactly what I go for in an earring. Casual but still a little sparkly, charming but not cutesy and pretty enough to draw light but not so spectacular as to draw attention away from my face.

If you’re not in the habit of wearing earrings, give it a shot.  I have pierced ears but only wear clip-ons, so I can pull them off or put them on at a moment’s notice.  Also, you should always ALWAYS wear earrings when trying on clothing  (nothing dangly, please). You’ll be amazed on how much more put together you’ll look, just with a simple pair of bobs.

More fabulousness after the jump, clicky click!
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Doo dah! Doo dah!

(Get it? Because you can say “thousand dollar hooker shoe” to the tune of Camptown Races? Anyone?)

You know, I’ve got great affection for Giuseppe Zanotti.  Some of my very favorite shoes in my personal collection come from his rhinestone-encrusted brain.  I appreciate his whimsically literal approach to footwear and can’t help but be charmed by silly but still artistically interesting shoes like this:

Say what you will, but it has charm. I would wear them to a hip garden party or a gallery crawl.  I mean granted, they’re almost $900 at Endless which is a bit steep for whimsy, but if they dropped down to $200 at my local Last Call I’d snag them in a heartbeat.

These, on the other hand?

These are tragiculous. They hurt my soul. These are thousand dollar shoes that are designed to make you look like a thirty dollar hooker.

Now, I actually own some pretty stupendous apricot silk peau de soie heels with a collar of hundreds upon hundreds of individually-set crystals that swing in fringe around my ankles and I jokingly call them my stripper heels. They even zip up the back and they STILL look less strippery than these.

Pull it together, Joe.  Stop chasing the ruble and come back to us, please.

Oh Stewie, we’ve been apart for such a long time. I just haven’t loved what you’ve been doing lately and I’ve got several pairs of you sitting in my shoe room who’ve never seen the light of day. Yet these?

These are ringing my bell in a very big way.

So much so that I just might forgive you for having that incident a few months ago when, after I asked one of your questionably dressed shopgirls about a shoe coming in wide widths (which, btw, it does) she told me “Maybe you should try Sears for that sort of thing.”

Sears? SEARS? I’m wearing Lanvin for God’s sake! Are you prepared for the cosmic disruption that could come from someone in archival Lanvin walking into SEARS? It’d make 2012 look like the teddy bears’ freakin’ picnic. Are you willing to do that to the universe, Mr Weitzman? Because I’m not.

It is only my excruciatingly good breeding (and the fact that I think she had a rollicking case of the face herp) that stopped me from slapping her across her filth-spewing mouth.

But still, for these mocassins on sale and in wide widths at Endless, I’ll forgive you.

I remember when I was but a young glamling, sitting in my friend Iolanda’s living room –her father was the Portuguese ambassador I believe, or something equally cool and mysterious– and watching my first Almodóvar movie, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

It’s funny, because I don’t remember being rocked by it in any profound way, although it’s one of my go-to fashion references now. We watched it and then spent the rest of the afternoon deciding which member of Color Me Badd we’d let go to second base as soon as we had second bases to go to.  You know, like you do.

What I do remember was being shocked at Rossy De Palma.  How could a woman who wasn’t conventionally beautiful be in a movie as a viable sex symbol? And yet the more I looked, the more fascinated I became, and now I think she is one of the most interestingly beautiful women I’ve ever seen:

(also. See those shoes? I would stab you for those shoes. Yes, even you.)

(images courtesy of Château Thombeau)

Everything about her makes me want to look at her more.  There are a million and one bland, prettily perfect girls who get a look and nothing more (Katherine Heigl, I’m looking at you, briefly) but none of them are even a speck as intriguing as Ms De Palma.

“Uh, great Plumcake. Glad you like her…I thought this was a shoe post.”

It is. My reaction to the Vigotti Panya pump was much the same as my initial reaction to Rossy.

I hated it. Historically, I have no great love for an angular Louis heel, and when I first saw this shoe I thought it was just another cheap kick with any old heel tacked on.  But I found myself going back to them over and over, and connecting them to Rossy de Palma in my mind.

Now perhaps it’s because they have a Spanish feel to them and I’ve got a deep fondness for Iberian chic, probably because of Almodóvar’s highly-stylized early influence, but the more I look at them, the more I love them.

The croc print is the best iteration for my fashionable farthing, but they’re available in several different treatments (and come in wide width) on sale at Zappos for under $75, which is no mean feat for a shoe that’s made in Brazil and not China.

I had an Uncle Guido growing up.

Now he wasn’t actually my uncle, nor was he actually Italian, so I have a hard time associating “guido” with anything but a towering wall of Irish muscle who lived across the street and kayaked with my actual –though still not Italian– uncle and married a woman who was given MY ruby earrings right out of my ears, not that I’m still bitter about that twenty four years later, DAD.

(You may say a six year-old has no business wearing ruby earrings, in which case I weep for the depth of your wrongness. I loved those things and have NEVER had a pair since.)

ANYWAY

Apparently the old less-than-flattering term has surfaced again from the cast of that show with the little orange girl and the big orange guys. I’m not familiar with the show or its cast, but I do get PR invites to go to parties with them. Yeah.  Which incidentally cracked my brother up since I put on my facebook page “What’s a Jwoww and why would I want to go to a party with it?”

I still don’t know the answer to either of those questions.

I DO know, however, that I want to lick these shiny shiny shoes, the “Guido”  patent leather drivers from Salvatore Ferragamo:

Right?

Also I DEFY you not to be cheery when wearing a shiny pair of red patent leather drivers. It cannot be done.

They’re on sale at Saks so the sizing is limited and getting increasingly so, but they were available in bigfoot sizes last I checked.

So we all know of my almost innumerate imaginary secret boyfriends, Lanvin designer Alber Elbaz is possibly the one for whom I have the most cheek-pinching affection.

I mean come ON how do you not want to squeeze him? And maybe see if honey comes out of his head? He’s pretty much the only designer working today to whom I would like to talk really embarrassing baby talk. Hooza fashion visionary with a remarkably witty appreciation of the female form who singlehandedly revived a grand but flagging house of couture? Ris rit ru? Ris rit ru? Res rit ris!!! and so on.

Anyway, I know Alber isn’t over accessories, but I just want to kiss him for even being involved in the production of brightly colored, beautifully made python ballet flats, because it hits pretty much every note I want for every day mucking about.  Every single pair of python flats I’ve owned I’ve worn into the ground and wished I’d bought three.

I would get every penny’s worth of wear out of all of these. Check them out, along with other Lanvin –including some of the best and brightest flats I’ve seen anywhere, many on sale– at Barney’s.