Customize Your Shoes With Steve Madden
As Stacy London would say…”Shut UP!”
In a world where we could only resort to customizing Vans slip ons and some Nike runnings, Steven Madden has pushed the envelope to make it a real girl’s dream: customize your own fashionable shoe. The New York Times gives a more in depth look of the new service, so I went to Steve’s website to get a better look of what it’s all about.
The concept is simple.
Choose one of 45 different styles of shoe (from Uggs to high heels) and play around digitally by picking colors of the trimmings, heel, straps and buttons, from leather to faux animal prints. Prices vary from $89.95 to $169.95. You can even customize a couple of handbags too. Once your choices are made, it’ll take about 3 weeks for your shoes to arrive and to enjoy.
Here’s a shoe I designed on Steve Madden’s interface, cute no?
Though I’m sure every girl would like their shoes to be designed and created by the likes of say Christian Louboutin, but average income people can’t afford shoes at $500-$600 a pop. According to the NY Times, Steve Madden has “almost no online competition” right now, but the company may as well revolutionize online retail shoe shopping for the mainstream public. It’s like the American Apparel of shoes, buy the base, customize everything else yourself. How can you go wrong?
The concept can be pushed even further to handbags as already shown. This trend could spread to sunglasses, gloves, clothes, hats, socks, tights, and the list goes on. Of course, such customization will demand the proper resources and work force to handle the process and most likely new regulations.
Designing or modifying your own clothes is not a new concept though. In some Montreal boutiques like Mad-Ame in the Gay Village, offers their clients the option to design their own clothes with a tailor. They also sell ready to wear pieces and each can be modified to the client’s wishes. Word to the ones who don’t know, this is a lesbian clothing store. Don’t know what that is? You should check it out yourself, I personally found it pretty cool to be greeted with a slushie and have the opportunity to play Mrs. Pac-Man in the store.
Another idea for those of you shopping for the holiday season!
