Steve Madden, What Are You Thinking?

My Top 3

Although I do praise for pushing the envelope in letting their clients customize their own shoes last fall, I’m appalled that they have the galls to blatantly copy designer shoes to sell them off as their own at a cheaper price.

Repeating their offenses from Christian Louboutin to most recently Balenciaga. The pair in question came into light at the where the sporty multi-colored pump has been grossly and obviously copied by Steve Madden. Not only that, those lacy peep toe, construction boot pumps they call “” are also a knock off of line. Perhaps the sales won’t mean much significance to Balenciaga’s financial portfolio, but designers need to protect their designs from profiteering companies like Steve Madden. Even now there is barely a dent or law that cracks down much on counterfeiting, much less crack down on companies who blatantly parade these copies around proudly with their own names stamped on it as if they were geniuses. And yet, they are. Because fashion is perhaps one of the few places where this sort of plagiarism can go unpunished no matter how big the elephant in the room is.

Funny how Steve Madden is expanding to a store within the Eaton Centre soon. I used to like them for making some cute shoes, but now, like Nine West, they’re not original enough to make their own designs and resort to copying for the sake of sales. A shame.

The predicament is typical and expected though. People don’t want, or can’t afford, to drop $500-$1000 on a single pair of shoes, even I haven’t taken the plunge yet to get shoes for that price. More importantly though, I put an emphasis on durability, I’m pretty rough on my shoes as I can get them scuffed quite easily, and prancing around in heels all day is a painful venture. Perhaps I should take heed of my cousin’s advice and start looking at shoes for comfort and classic styles. Growing old or growing wiser?

Above is the Steve Madden’s Balenciaga peep toe boot pump (wow, we gotta find a better name for this…), and I have to admit it’s a hot shoe I’d love to sport myself - but I don’t buy knock offs (and they never carry my size anyway).

Image credit: Steven Madden