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I know it might seem like a hack fashion joke for a Vogue writer to be having literal recurring dreams about a pair of shoes (specifically: the Christian Louboutin Kate 100 patent leather tie-dye print pumps in red-and-black ombré) but allow me to provide some crucial context: I m a culture writer who spends approximately 70% of my work-from-home life watching rom-coms in stained pajamas and haven t worn heels with any regularity since bat mitzvah season. Indeed, I recently sold the first pair of non-Croc shoes I d bought in almost a year (the Camper Kobarah sandals in blue, if you re curious) because I found even their objectively cushy soles to be “too pointy.” In other words, I m not necessarily the prototypical Louboutin customer; so why has this one specific pair of shoes wormed its way into my subconscious?
I can t remember exactly where I first glimpsed these shoes, which makes me think it was probably during a stoned fugue-state perusal of TheRealReal, but they ve been showing up in my dreams in odd ways—I m shopping for them, I can t find them, I buy them but they don t fit and I miss my return window, the horror!—for the last few weeks. In my waking life, I m specifically craving these shoes to go with the scarlet Selkie dress I recently bought for my stepsister s upcoming black-tie winter wedding, but when I m asleep, the Louboutins haunt me in a different way than items I m longing for usually do.
I like clothes and accessories as much as the next person, but I don t even usually remember my dreams (apart from one very memorable one from a few years ago where I was riding a seal in the waters off of Malibu, but I digress), let alone find them studded with repeat appearances from a specific pair of designer heels. Is my subconscious telling me to grow up, put away plastic shoes and start rocking a low yet fearsome heel, or is there some other alchemic twist of fate going on that s putting these Loubies at the forefront of my mind? As a seasoned and respected journalist, I knew exactly what I had to do: Google.
According to the online source Dream Dictionary, dreaming about shoes allegedly forecasts “something big to come on the horizon, sometimes new beginnings and other times setbacks” and can also symbolize “moving forward, grounding, stability, work and career, responsibilities, spirituality, and predicting the future.” That s a lot of stuff, not all of which is relevant to my specific life, but if a new beginning really is augured by the razor-thin-heeled pair of scarlet pumps stomping all over my dreamscape, maybe the best thing to do would be to simply lean into the unknown and…buy the shoes? (This isn t my first footwear-related rationalization, but it may in fact be my magnum opus.)
Unfortunately, my search for the Louboutins of my literal dreams hasn t been smooth sailing. I thought I had secured the bag on TheRealReal, where someone was selling a pair with exactly the heel height I sought (even in my wildest shoe fantasies, I don t envision myself spending an entire night of dinner and dancing propped up on stilettos); unfortunately, they were a size and a half too small for me, and the days when I would shove my size-eleven feet into a 9.5 and spend the night smile-wincing and covertly applying Band-Aids to my blisters in the bathroom are blissfully concluded.
I ve checked other designer and resale sites like Vestiaire Collective, Grailed and SSENSE to no avail, finding only stiletto-heeled versions that cost roughly half of my monthly rent (and even those are few and far between.) Short of somehow developing a close personal relationship with a Louboutin employee and sweet-talking them into unearthing an archival pair from some closet or storage locker somewhere, I feel like I ve more or less exhausted the options for actually finding a pair of these Louboutins and taking them from the stuff of fantasy into my footwear reality—now, all I can do is close my eyes at night and dream of a world in which I own these ombré beauties. Maybe it s a Proustian-madeleine situation in which the Louboutins would never actually bring me as much joy IRL as they did to my dreams, or maybe I m just not as good as I thought I was at incredibly niche online shopping, but either way, I ll be waiting for Crocs to bust out a stiletto version. (Oh, right, Balenciaga already did that!)
