OMG, Shoes!

I've had a long time shoe fetish. Ever since I was a kid I've had lots on hand. When my feet were big enough to fit in my mom's shoes, it got even better, but right around that time was when my tastes became my own. By the time I was able to start making my own decisions about purchases, I was vegetarian, and soon after that I was vegan.

For the bulk of the almost 15 years that I've been vegan, I didn't wear any leather, wool or silk. Not like I go out decked out in it now, but at some point I made a personal decision to wear vintage leather. I got big on collecting shoes from the 1930's through the 1960's. Whenever I could find them, I grabbed up vegan shoes, but every once in a while the most exquisite pair of delicate 1940's wedges would cross my path and my will power would wither and die. Me and my boyfriend at the time struggled with buying leather shoes, but we did it and we were resolved to maintain the shoes to keep them as long as we could without replacing them. I think he had a harder time with it than I did. The first time I bought a "new" pair of shoes that had bits of leather on it, I felt so guilty that I ended up spending $600 on sponsoring a cow named Linus at Farm Sanctuary. It only helped suppress the guilt a little bit...

I'm still nuts about shoes, but last year, after realizing how gluttonous my collection had become, I did some serious scaling back and started buying new shoes (vegan) just once or twice a year. My collection is now only down to about 70-80 pairs, which should keep me happy for quite a while. I am fully aware that this number of shoes is more than most people will own in their lifetime.

My ex-boyfriend has found a way to give back, not just scale back, and I think it's a great endeavor. I remember the first time we went to Moo Shoes in Manhattan and saw what a pathetic offering of vegan men's dress shoes there were out there - not just at Moo Shoe's but in general. Plenty of skate shoes, plenty of ugly hemp mocs and bad man sandals, but not a lot of sharp looking oxfords. I guess a big reason for the lack is that the average vegan guy isn't a guy that needs a snappy dress shoe, but times have changed. Check out Kevin's debut into the world of fine men's footwear with a heart. I'd post pics, but he's got his page in flash and I'm not clever enough to figure out how to post a pic from his site.

The Vegan Collection isn't just nice to animals, it's also nice to humans. His shoes are affordable and look like they'll hold up for a while, at least until he's able to start offering up some new designs!