Chuck Taylor

So, last year I bought a pair of Converse Chuck Taylor low top sneakers (laceless) in navy blue. I found they were a bit clunky and too big to wear without socks (which is my preferred method of shoe wearing in summertime). However, now that its winter I've been wearing these quite a bit with socks as part of my weekend pregnancy wardrobe, because really what says stylish more than cargo pants, a blue cable knit sweater from JCrew (at least its cashmere) and a pair of Chuck Taylor laceless lowtops. The other night I was at Marshalls (egads) and I saw a great looking pair of purple low top Chuck Taylors and I thought, hey, those aren't too bad. Of course, they only had them in Men's sizes 11 and 13 (even though they were on display in the women's department). Because really, there are so many men in Princeton who want to wear a size 13 purple clown shoe.

After seeing a girl on the subway this morning wearing converse I thought about the shoes again and decided to visit the website. Therein lies my problem. The Converse website is designed for people on Crack. I have never seen a consumer site so poorly designed. You can't hit the back button without totally losing your selections, god forbid you try and click on a shoe style to see it up close because if you want to go back you're at the main page again. At first glance you can't even easily tell how the hell you shop for shoes in the first place. They apparently make 97 different types of hi tops, low tops and other sorts of shoes but they certainly don't make it easy for browsers.

I managed to find my shoe style at least and then I'm looking for "purple". God forbid that's easy. Maybe its me, maybe I'm color blind these days but I'm looking at the little swatches on the page and I don't see purple-- instead I see four different shades of black. A scroll over these areas reveal "black, black monochrome, olive and amaranth." Okay, Amaranth rings a bell from the shoes I saw on display at Marshalls, but tell me this. Again, you're selling what are, essentially, unisex clown shoes... this isn't Scalamandre, why does the color need to be "amaranth"? Why can't it just be purple? Has Prince copyrighted the word "purple"? Is it in some way not descriptive enough?

I manage to get these things in my cart and I'm still working my way through the check out now... it's great to know they'll ship these puppies to the Jersey Isles, and that my purchase is in "US Dollars", tell me, is there really an international demand for these things???