Brown + red

Once again it's that time of year when I start thinking about what I'm going to wear all summer. Last year I tried and failed to find the perfect chunky brown Frankenstein sandals, and spent the entire season in a pair of serviceable but not 100% satisfactory Doc Martens. This year I've taken up the search again, and so far these Simple compostable "green" shoes are all I've found that comes anywhere close to what I want. But I'm not totally satisfied with the design of the upper (don't like the laces), and the soles are not tall enough. I briefly considered buying three pairs and stacking and sewing the soles myself ... but they're too expensive for that.

What I'm really trying to do is duplicate a pair of suede platform espadrilles I bought at the J. Crew outlet in Napa in about 1996. I liked them so much I bought two pairs of them, and still have one pair (why didn't I keep them both?!), which are now so close to completely worn out that I hardly dare to wear them anymore, lest they fall apart completely leaving me with no sample or pattern to show what I want.

How hard is it to make shoes? Is this something people actually do? Somebody must! But who? I'm so picky about these things, and so loyal once I find something I love – wouldn't it be great to be able to go to a shoemaker the same way you go to a tailor, and say, "Here's how they should look, here's how they should fit, here's what to make them out of, and I want two pairs in brown, two in black and two in red."

Anyway. Such lofty matters I'm occupied with these days, eh? The other thing I've been working with is color combinations for my summer uniform. This year I'm thinking I want to do brown and red. And green. And of course I have a lot of things that are black, too. But the brown and red combo is making me very happy right now. Also gray and white, but these are not colors I am good at wearing – they'll have to work their way into other places, like drawings. I bought a whole handful of various gray Tombow markers the other day and have been playing with them, making all these simple and obscure line drawings that remind me of snow, and the beach.

I also love this red camisole, which I just ordered from the linen clothing manufacturer that makes about 80% of the clothes I purchase. With a long brown rough linen or hemp wrap skirt and some clunky tall Frankenstein sandals, and some kind of wrap around the top for cool evenings – I've been obsessed with wrapped clothing lately, specifically the dhoti, having just picked up (cheap, from the remainder table) a fabulous coffee table book on Costumes, Textiles & Jewellery of India that shows several different ways of wrapping dhotis, turbans, etc., and also offers the information that in certain societies of India, cut and sewn clothing is considered unclean, and an abomination! A notion I will be interested in exploring this year – anyway, I think this red and brown thing is going to be great, if I can only find the right sandals.

There are also these, but I can't really picture myself wearing them on the bike. Plus, they cost almost five hundred bucks.