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Holy crap, these are cute. Just the thing to push your saccharine levels over the top when you're playing retro wannabe dressup with Nanette Lepore, dig?

Don't get me wrong! Sometimes I dream about this weird discount shoe place somewhere in L.A. where all the stuff I've lusted after for the last eight months is marked down to like $90 plus it's in a euro 40, and these improbable ankle-butchering cuties will no doubt make a cameo appearance the next time I eat too much ice cream before I hit the hay and am all preoccupied in my snooze. But that is one gargantuan heel. And $830 is, you know, a lot of dough. Sam Edelman has a more or less true-to-feeling knockoff at zapp's for an even c-note. In different colorways natch.

You want vintage? Here you go. Re-mix has some excellent styles that are pretty satisfactory for even the most discriminating (read: perfectionistic) tastes out there. I do wish they were a little better quality, though.

I love this take on a open-weave oxford-pump, sort of like the style from the '30s but oh so much sleeker. The black patent with the slender, wood-toned stacked heel is all about being dark in the warm summer sun, but the contrast and vintage flair will give you too much personality to sift into the background.

Dude! Wait a minute! The esteemed John Fluevog is totally being ripped, man. At a similar price point, even. I'm all for black studded sandals for the wearing, but Theory totally cleaned this up and fudged all over the fluevog funkiness. For shame, y'all!

Again! More! More! Black patent + corkly business + peeptoe + ankle strap + inimitable marc jacobs. Call it a day, y'all!

So I'm all in love with Chie Mahara anyway, but these are so good they're tempting me away from my own [admittedly obsessively well defined] comfort zone. I'm not normally about such a pointy heel, but okay. And the wide vamp cut-off at the toe is too barbie-shoes for me, but what the hell! and t-straps do little (fine, they do nothing) to make my legs look less stumpy, but...but...Damn! These are super cuties.

I don't know for sure, but I think I might like this variant better than the t-bar sandal. The color, the peeptoe, the heel, the curly-q business are all big winners, so I guess you can't really go wrong with either one.

Again with the bubble gum pink--and I'm digging it here, too. Fun-time colors for the patent leather this spring, and if you're afraid that some design element (the black shiny button at the vamp, the extra-wide crisscross, the heel with the embedded speech bubble) might push it over the top? Just wear it with a demure black gothy summery dress, and you are set.

I'm so in love with the idea of grass-green patent leather shoes. It's the sort of thing that's very playful, but rooted in its own adulthood if for no other reason that it's too sophisticated for a child.