Despite Hong Kong’s vast array of shopping opportunities I have struggled to find children’s shoes, or at least anything resembling the sort of children’s shoes I can relate to. Think flimsy, think shiny, think odd colour combinations and adornments on the other hand and the choice is huge.
Brought up on a strict diet of sensible shoes by my own conscientious mother due to the combined evils of wide feet and high arches I have a clear idea of the sort of thing I want my daughter to wear. Fortunately the clever people in the footwear marketing department back home have now worked out ways to keep both mothers and daughters happy, which was not the case when I was small and yet the sort of shoes I have in mind are proving some what illusive. Take note: there is a gap in the market here just waiting to be filled.
Having outgrown the sandals and Mary-Janes she arrived with from UK, our daughter owns nothing but a pair of trainers and some rubber beach shoes which are not ideal as local temperatures plummet to a hitherto unimaginable 15 degrees.
Yesterday I found a Start Rite shop listed in a useful book called Everything Hong Kong but we arrived only to be told by the building’s lift attendant that it had closed down six months previously.
We identified a second shop which, the book informed me, was a good source of well-made imported shoes for children and made our way there. It was a relief to find that the sales assistants were prepared to measure my daughter's feet, or their length at least. On a previous excursion with the boys when I asked to have their feet measured the assistant looked at me in astonishment and said, we don’t do that. So how do we know what size to buy? I asked. He shrugged. We left. Another note: providing a measuring service might sell more shoes.
My children all have wide feet. G fittings are standard for us but a width fitting for my little girl was not on offer. Having established the length of her feet I eyed the narrow buckle shoes with scepticism. It is the end of the winter season here and the sales are on which left us with a selection of some inappropriate designs in fairly extraordinary colours. Our final choice was between a shiny pink pair that my daughter said hurt her feet and a heavy black pair which I struggled to reconcile with the whimsical pastel dresses she selects from her wardrobe each morning. Then I saw the price, $HK 704, on sale, which at today’s badly depleted (for us) exchange rate is not far off £70. I looked at the pink ones again, $HK1409 or £130. For shoes for a two year old? That’s more than I pay for my shoes (or that’s what I told my husband when I rang him to protest). I left the shop, justifying my decision to put the two year old back in her trainers by saying they hadn’t been wide enough anyway. Her little feet had looked so squashed. Images of tiny bound Chinese feet were by this time flashing before my eyes and I decided we’d better go home.
Today we were back on the warpath. I rang an English friend to find out where she’d got shoes for her two year old and she gave me the name of a shop, adding by way of warning that she hadn’t dared admit to her husband what she’d paid when she’d finally tracked down a wider than average Italian make. I was by this time not surprised to learn that the shop didn’t measure but I seized on the sensible sort of shoe one might find in the Putney Exchange, paid twice what you’d think of as reasonable there and went home making a mental note to buy in bulk when we finally go home to UK on leave.
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4 comments:
"not far off £70" Yikes!
I have to admit I rarely buy real shoes for my kids anymore - they both have trainers, snow boots and slippers and that's about it. The advantage of trainers is that, being lace-ups, the width issue isn't quite such a big deal. Of course, living in the US, it's perfectly normal for kids to wear trainers to school every day. I am going to have to buy them both some 'good' shoes once the winter is over though, but at least it won't cost me £70!
I've had to travel a long road since being here, and let go of my deeply-held convictions (shared I think by generations of brain-washed British mothers), that only Clarks or Start-rite will do, and that not having your children's feet properly measured will mean they are deformed for life.
My kids now wear shoes that they weren't measured for, that I fitted myself, that only come in one width. You know what though? I don't see the entire adult population of the US hobbling around, so I assume my children will be ok too. I'm lucky, though, that they don't have wide feet - I have no idea what you would do here.
The word verification is "hotolate", which I think we should adopt as a good abbreviation of "hot chocolate".
hotolate for hot chocolate? Excellent!
Anyone else remember the machines you put your feet in, wearing the shoes you were hoping to buy so your mother could see if your toes were squished? Of course you swore they felt just fine because you liked them so much and otherwise she'd make you buy the ugly ones! Goodness knows how much x-ray radiation we were exposed to!
Children's feet are an emotive issue. A friend of mine who worked as a shoe buyer for a large chain store once told me that anyone could learn to fit their children's shoes and that it was actually very straight forward. By making a big deal of having expert shoe fitters the shoe stores are successfully exploiting middle class angst about children's feet and thus selling unnecessarily expensive shoes. A clever marketing ploy!
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