Speakup, Naughty!

I have been getting increasingly more concerned about my favorite leopard flats. They’re “Naughty” by Nine West, and they’ve been discontinued for a while now. I tried to stock up while I could, but this is my third and final pair. I wear them constantly, and they are, sadly, beat-to-shit. I mean, they are really kind of embarrassing at this point. I still have a silver pair in decent shape, and black patent pair in good shape, but the plain black ones are beat-nearly-to-shit as well.

Periodically, I check the Nine West website to see if they have brought back my beloved Naughty, but I have only been disappointed. Until last week!

While it’s not exactly Naughty, they came out with a style called Speakup, which is almost as good! The photo on the website looks a little weird, so I wasn’t sure exactly what I was getting, but it turns out, the upper part of the shoe is almost exactly the same.

The sole, however, is different. Since I find myself running up and down the subway stairs, or on a slick slate sidewalk, or on a slippery polished floor pretty regularly, I really like a rubber sole on my shoes. The sole of the Naughty is totally rubber. They are as comfortable and easy as wearing a pair of keds, and I often treat them as such. It’s much more flattering to wear a pretty pair of flats with shorts instead of a pair of sneakers. Actually, it’s pretty much always more flattering to wear flats instead of sneakers. Which is why Naughties are/were so perfect and awesome.

While the Speakups look the same from the top, the sole is regular slippery synthetic whatever, with  rubber inset at the front and at the heel. This does make them seem a little fancier, but I would take a full rubber sole any day. It’s underneath your feet, after all. Speaking of fancier, the material is much nicer too. My Naughties are essentially printed plastic, and my Speakups are “pony” a.k.a. cowhide. This means I can’t wear them in the rain, but it means I can wear them out to a nice dinner. It’s almost like they have a built in defense mechanism.

I was thrilled when I realized how closely the Speakups resembled my Naughties. I immediately went to ninewest.com so I could replace my plain black leather flats, and I had my fingers crossed for a red pair too. Unfortunately, they don’t have plain black leather, only plain navy. If you think about it, navy shoes would look better with blue jeans than black shoes would. Except I don’t wear black shoes with blue jeans. I wear colored shoes. So even though the navy is kind of nice, it’s not really an option I need. The only other choices were black patent and black glitter, which I’m not really feeling either.

Hopefully though, they’ll come out with some new colors for fall, and I’ll be here, ready to catch them!