I can’t say enough how much I’ve been impressed by our young students in these last couple of months. Students from the high school level and even on down to the elementary level have poured their support in for our Haiti relief campaign. And even though our promotion has ended, students are still showing their strength and ability to mobilize for good causes.

Student Alex Kyrillos dropping off the donations from Bishops School

That said, all of us at Shoe Metro would like to thank the students of Bishop’s School in San Diego and also those of Spreckles Elementary for their donations. Both schools made large contributions, with Bishop’s giving about 450 pairs of shoes alone. There are still victims in Haiti and now Chile has suffered its own devastating earthquakes. These gifts are sure to help both in these hard times. Thank you again!

Welcome back to Weird Shoe Wednesdays! To make up for my absence last week, I’ve brought out some extra special, extra weird, extra eye-popping shoes for you this week. We all know the primary purpose of shoes is to help protect our feet and let us travel farther than if we were barefoot. Well, many different people have taken this transportation function of shoes to the next level. And so we have a plethora of shoe cars!

Of course, we have the classic high-heeled pump in a sort of motorized reverse tricycle design. In sexy red, no less. Red high heels? And cars? Men basically have no chance of resisting. Continue Reading…

Anna Kendrick in Sergio Rossi Suede Birdcage Sandals

The lovely blogger over at Shoe-A-Day did an excellent job today (actually, very, very early this morning) compiling some of the best shoes showcased at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony and also figuring out what they were and where you might be able to purchase some for yourself. If you have a minute, head on over to Shoe-A-Day and show her some love. Personally, I favor Anna Kendricks’ nude plaform sandals (above) but there were plenty of great looks. Enjoy the rest below! Continue Reading…

Blake Mycoskie is more or less my hero and he seems to be a favorite over at Running With Heels as well, where he was interviewed for a second time in just a few months (I highlighted a different interview back in November). Blake Mycoskie is the founder of TOMS Shoes, a very generous, charitable shoe company that works to alleviate poverty all around the globe. TOMS works on a one-to-one giving model meaning that if you buy a pair of TOMS shoes for yourself, the company donates another pair to impoverished children in South America and Ethiopia.

Photo: www.worldvisionreport.org

According to this most recent interview, TOMS has donated more than 500,000 pairs of shoes to these children and it plans to donate another 500,000 this year. Apparently, this is just one part of a larger effort to eradicate Podoconiosis, a crippling foot disease common in Southern Ethiopia caused by walking barefoot on certain types of fertile, volcanic soil. Check out the rest of the short interview with this saint of an entrepreneur. He never ceases to admire.

I’m a fairly practical person so I’ll keep trying to provide very practical, useful information in regards to shoes. I know we’re coming around to the end of winter but high-heeled shoes are hard to walk in all year long. I dug up a really cheap home remedy to give your slippery shoes some much needed traction. All you need are two bathtub appliques, a pencil, and scissors. Check it out and don’t ever slip up again. =)

A smooth leather outsole makes for a slippery stride.

• How-to Guide: How to Make Your Shoes Slip-Safe

We’ve hit 400 fans on our Shoe Metro Facebook page and, as promised, we’re giving away a pair of shoes!

We want to send our congratulations out to April, a loyal Shoe Metro customer and avid Facebook fan, who just won a free pair of Asics Gel-Strike running shoes from us! Hopefully, they’ll help her conquer her next marathon run. Good job!

Congrats to April!

Don’t forget to become a fan on Facebook. We definitely have more prizes in store for you if you do. =)

I can’t believe I’ve gone this long without mentioning how much the Winter Olympics have taken over my household. My family just cannot get enough double axels and triple toe flips and all that great figure skating stuff.

Photo: Vibram

At any rate, a quick search for “Olympics shoes” turned up these toe-loving running shoes from Vibram. Vibram actually develops a whole line of these shoes, called the FiveFingers shoes, that are made for sports such as ChiRunning, Pose Method Running, and Bouldering (yeah, I don’t know either). The FiveFingers Classic model features an extremely thin, lightweight, stretch polyamide fabric upper and a TC-1 rubber outsole. They’re supposed to take you back to the innocence of running around barefoot as a child, helping you feel more connected to spirit of the earth. Or something like that.

I don’t quite get it but I can see how it might make some sense. I hear that some Olympic runners from South Africa train barefoot and they’re consistent winners in running. At the very least, they’re better than Nike’s take on barefoot shoes.

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Shoeblog recently had the wonderful privilege of speaking with Pasquale Fabrizio (click here for the interview), who you’ll remember as the ambitious designer of the forthcoming all-glass heels featured some weeks ago. It’s a good interview (with more great photos of the beautiful shoes as well) in which Fabrizio reveals his thought process and the inspiration behind the glass concoctions. He also talks about the difficult process of designing the shoes and having to bring in industrialists because they were more familiar with glass than any fashion designers. Finally, he has some interesting comments about the social value of shoes between men and women.

Photo: Shoeblog

Unfortunately, it sounds like I guessed correctly that his line of glass shoes will only be available to Hollywood elite, being priced at $7,500. But he interestingly didn’t patent the process of developing the amazing sandals, leaving room for other designers to be able to build on his ideas in the future, possibly at an affordable price point for all of us to be able to enjoy. Here’s for looking to the future!

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I recently took a gander at my sister’s shoes and they were in terrible shape. The uppers only had minor scuffs but the heels were absolutely mangled and I wondered how she could ever walk in them around the linoleum floors of her classroom (she’s a middle school teacher, by the way) all day long.

So for my sister, I’ve researched how to replace those damaged heel tips to enable smooth comfort again. I hope this helps you as much as it’s helped her!

Photo: TLC

• How-to Guide: How To Fix Broken High Heels

Nicholas Kirkwood announced plans to design a special pair of Alice In Wonderland-themed shoes for window display to coincide with the upcoming release of Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland movie. But what he didn’t know is that Miss Bunny, an artist on Etsy, already beat him to the punch.

These two pairs of Alice In Wonderland wedges take after the Cheshire Cat and the Queen of Hearts. As you can see, they’re decorated all sorts of trinkets from the movie including clocks, mushrooms, cake, and a deck of cards. The Cheshire Cat shoes have a tail that wraps up your ankle; the Queen of Hearts shoes have dual twisty ankle wraps adorned with even more playing cards. I’d say the tail is definitely the creepiest part of this whole mess. It reminds me of the Boyfriend Body Pillow that’s supposed to hug you to sleep but ends up feeling kinda disturbing. *shivers*

More pics after the jump.

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