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cimoreneWho wants to hear an uplifting story about shoes? What about a wearying yet comical saga of trials, frustrations, and ultimate triumph... and sneakers?
These shoes are the Superga 2750 COTU Shade.
1. rose/turquoise 2. blue/light violet
3. ribes/pink 4. I wasn't able to find this one in stock so IDK the name, but isn't it lovely?
5. lavender/acid green 6. ribes/sunflower
7. Also out of stock apparently 8. dkbord/dahlia
I encountered my first image of #1 last week on ModCloth, who are my enemies*, but I fell for it right away and would have considered ordering it anyway and being stuck in International Shipping and Journeying 1½hrs Round Trip to The Tollhouse To Pay The Import Duty Hell, except that it isn't even in stock there, it's just listed as "Coming Soon!"
So I tried to find it elsewhere by Googling things like "Superga pink blue dye" and quickly enough learned the style name. However, when I first checked the only stockist I could find was out of every colorway except #8, which is too dark for me. I was extremely sad, but I turned my attention to looking for other shoes.
A few days later, though, I was still thinking about it. I tried again and followed a link to Zappos, just to see what the shipping policy was like there. For years they wouldn't ship outside the continental US, but they do now! However, Import Duty Hell still loomed. I shelved the problem and turned my attention to shopping for dress shoes and summer slip-ons instead, but when I related the sorry story to my mom tonight I found myself dwelling on my disappointment again. "I'm so butthurt about those shoes," I said to Wax. Wax is an excellent wife who frequently assertively tells me that I should do what I already secretly wanted to do anyway, so she said I should have them shipped to my parents if I wanted them that much.
I went to the website to do so, only to find that they were sold out in my size! In fact, they were only out of #1, rose/turquoise and #2, blue/light violet, but they had a very unflattering photo of #5 up as the last option and I wasn't sure I liked it enough for $80 USD. I tried Googling again with 'EU' in the search terms, then went to Google Images and skimmed the alt tags of the big product images for addresses that looked like they might be webstores.
And I found one! A store in Italy that stocked 1, 2, 3, 5, & 6! I spent a confusing while confirming that they DO ship to Finland before creating an account (why do you ALWAYS have to create an account in a whole separate rigamarole? Why can't you just do all of that integrated with the ordering process? #shittywebstoredesign) only to find a Country: field on the address form that only had Italy in the drop-down options, and wouldn't let me enter anything else. So I went back to Google, found a second Italian webstore with the same colors in stock and even more adorable interface courtesy of Microsoft Translator (I'm still not sure what part of the shopping cart is supposed to be 'basketball'), and then spent a solid 20 minutes agonizing about which color I wanted. I almost got #5 after all (ironically?), but finally pretty much picked #1 via eenie-meenie-miney-mo.
* because they rename all the products in their entire store and only intermittently list the real manufacturer and never the real product name, which means you can't look for them from other sources if you can't figure it out. That is bad enough right now when you have to pay huge tolls if you order things shipped internationally, to say nothing of your carbon footprint, but it was completely torturous back before they had international shipping.
These shoes are the Superga 2750 COTU Shade.
1. rose/turquoise 2. blue/light violet
3. ribes/pink 4. I wasn't able to find this one in stock so IDK the name, but isn't it lovely?
5. lavender/acid green 6. ribes/sunflower
7. Also out of stock apparently 8. dkbord/dahlia
I encountered my first image of #1 last week on ModCloth, who are my enemies*, but I fell for it right away and would have considered ordering it anyway and being stuck in International Shipping and Journeying 1½hrs Round Trip to The Tollhouse To Pay The Import Duty Hell, except that it isn't even in stock there, it's just listed as "Coming Soon!"
So I tried to find it elsewhere by Googling things like "Superga pink blue dye" and quickly enough learned the style name. However, when I first checked the only stockist I could find was out of every colorway except #8, which is too dark for me. I was extremely sad, but I turned my attention to looking for other shoes.
A few days later, though, I was still thinking about it. I tried again and followed a link to Zappos, just to see what the shipping policy was like there. For years they wouldn't ship outside the continental US, but they do now! However, Import Duty Hell still loomed. I shelved the problem and turned my attention to shopping for dress shoes and summer slip-ons instead, but when I related the sorry story to my mom tonight I found myself dwelling on my disappointment again. "I'm so butthurt about those shoes," I said to Wax. Wax is an excellent wife who frequently assertively tells me that I should do what I already secretly wanted to do anyway, so she said I should have them shipped to my parents if I wanted them that much.
I went to the website to do so, only to find that they were sold out in my size! In fact, they were only out of #1, rose/turquoise and #2, blue/light violet, but they had a very unflattering photo of #5 up as the last option and I wasn't sure I liked it enough for $80 USD. I tried Googling again with 'EU' in the search terms, then went to Google Images and skimmed the alt tags of the big product images for addresses that looked like they might be webstores.
And I found one! A store in Italy that stocked 1, 2, 3, 5, & 6! I spent a confusing while confirming that they DO ship to Finland before creating an account (why do you ALWAYS have to create an account in a whole separate rigamarole? Why can't you just do all of that integrated with the ordering process? #shittywebstoredesign) only to find a Country: field on the address form that only had Italy in the drop-down options, and wouldn't let me enter anything else. So I went back to Google, found a second Italian webstore with the same colors in stock and even more adorable interface courtesy of Microsoft Translator (I'm still not sure what part of the shopping cart is supposed to be 'basketball'), and then spent a solid 20 minutes agonizing about which color I wanted. I almost got #5 after all (ironically?), but finally pretty much picked #1 via eenie-meenie-miney-mo.
* because they rename all the products in their entire store and only intermittently list the real manufacturer and never the real product name, which means you can't look for them from other sources if you can't figure it out. That is bad enough right now when you have to pay huge tolls if you order things shipped internationally, to say nothing of your carbon footprint, but it was completely torturous back before they had international shipping.
(no subject)
Date: 25 Mar 2013 12:57 pm (UTC)