Last weekend, I went on a shoe bender. But unlike most such forays, this one cost me less than $100.
One find was a pair of glittery jelly flats from Jeffrey Campbell. You heard it here first: Jellies are back! I was so excited about the $30 flats that I wore them two days in a row, which I regretted almost instantly on the second day.
The thing about jellies is that they’re horribly uncomfortable and they make your feet sweat. Of course, I’ll be wearing them again next week because I love them.
I also bought the same pair of ankle-strap flats in two different colors, black and tan. Each ran me only $20.
Most of the time, my budget shopping involves finding bargains on high-quality or mid-level brands. The full prices are often in the $50-$75 range for a pair of shoes, perhaps even more, but I find them on sale or at places like Nordstrom Rack.
It’s rarer for me to purchase items from budget retailers that are $20 full price, like the shoes I bought over the weekend. In general, this signals a lower quality that I don’t want for closet staples I wear all the time. I figure if I’m going to spend $20, I may as well spend $40 and have the item last two or three times as long.
However, there are some circumstances in which the best policy is to find the most affordable option. Below are some reasons to go the true budget route:
1. The item is ultra trendy. I remember wearing jellies to the amusement park as a kid, and their impracticality was truly impressive. If I had ridden a water ride, and was then riding one of those suspended roller coasters where your feet dangle, I’d have to take my jellies off and sit on them so they wouldn’t fall off and get lost. Even more impressive is the fact that they’ve actually come back into style, and how thrilled I was to find them. But jellies would not have been worth paying any more than I did, and every season has a few of these pieces. Manage your spending on them.
2. Extreme wear and tear is inevitable. That huge bag for lugging around your laptop or the flats you’ll wear for a work trip to New York will take a beating. My $30 Zara tote is holding up just fine on the job, and I’m never worried about things like sending it down a conveyer belt at the airport.
3. You want a logo piece without the financial investment. My jellies are from Jeffrey Campbell, a shoe brand that usually runs about $150 a pair, give or take. They cost $30 because they’re plastic and not super-expensive to make. Lots of brands feature items like this — a vinyl tote, a simple cotton tee, a pair of tennis shoes. You’ll know intuitively that items under a particular brand should cost more, but if it’s the brand you want more than the specific item, you can accomplish this on the cheap.
4. The wardrobe staple version is already in your closet. We wear blue jeans all the time, but what about white jeans? You won’t wear them nearly as often, and if you’ve already got five pairs of good quality blue jeans, it’s OK to save on the white ones.
5. It’s an incredibly specific item that you may only wear once or twice. If you never wear green, spend $10 on your St. Patty’s tee and call it a day.
(E-mail Kristyn Schiavone at
, or follow her on Twitter at @KKSchiavone.)
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