Vegan Wingtips
Due to mental reconditioning by television makeover reruns, I’ve become convinced that I need a pair of brown wingtip shoes to wear with my blue jeans. I’ve always been a fan of contrasts, and nothing in world seems quite so keen to me as a nice pair of dressy wingtips with my frayed denim jeans. Just add a sarcastic or retro t-shirt with a casual blazer on top, and you’ve got an instant hipster.
I wanted these shoes long before becoming a vegan, but as with most things involving me spending money on fashion, it got put off for the future. I find myself earnestly wishing that it hadn’t in this case. After all, much my like the Doc Marten boots I kept around for months after going vegan, it would be nice to declare that I had these leather shoes long before I became a vegan. I could even throw in some rhetoric about how I’m saving the planet by only buying shoes once these wore out.
I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent skulking around department store shoe departments checking the composition of the shoes. All the memories sort of blend together now. Occasionally I get my hopes up when I initially see the word “synthetic” before being inevitably crushed by the fact that only the sole is man-made and not full-grain bovine leather. I’ve checked every nook and cranny of the Internet for brown vegan wingtips with absolutely nothing in my closet to show for it. The closest I ever managed to find was a pair of black synthetic “brogues” from a company in the UK for the US equivalent of $150 before shipping.
I haven’t been tempted to betray my ethics, but I have thought once or twice about taking some hostages and making vegan brown wingtips one of my demands. I figure at worst I would pick up somewhere between ten and twenty years in the big house, and I assure you that properly maintained shoes can last virtually forever.