THE PRICE WE PAY FOR GLAMOUR

Readers might remember we dressed up all in black a few weeks ago, looking all glam and ready for our close-ups, but you know the expression "never let 'em see you sweat" which, loosely translated means 'of course it's hard, but make it look easy'.

Today we're going to share with you two more of Valerie's shoe tips, so take a look at this once very badly behaved shoe, which had to be brought to heel, so to speak.

The first day Valerie wore it (without socks or stockings, in her usual manner), before she'd walked five blocks they had begun to rub the skin off her ankles.  What's a girl to do?

Packing tape to the rescue!

As soon as she arrived at work, she got some packing tape out of her desk drawer, cut off a piece about three inches long, and wrapped it around her ankle.

It looked like this.  Bet you can't see it.  If you look carefully, you might see the light reflecting off the tape a bit.  If you're wearing socks or stockings, even the eagle-eyed will not see that you're wearing tape on your ankle.  Sounds odd, but works like a charm.  The smoothness of the prevents further chafing.  The tape is durable, but the adhesive is gentle and doesn't harm the skin.

Do NOT get out your bandaids.  They are absolutely useless in this location.  Too much friction.  And they're too narrow, so sooner or later the edge of the shoe will hit the edge of the bandaid, and that's when the bandaid starts rolling up and coming off.   Don't even get out your favorite Mondrian bandaids (these bandaids kindly supplied by Jean).  Use them someplace where they'll stay - on your arm, around your finger...  but not on your ankle.  Mondrian bandaids are much too hard to come by.

If you have a sense of humor about it, you can get artsy packing tape,

and protect your ankle with that.  (Polka dot tape also supplied by Jean.)

Of course, this is just a temporary solution.  You don't want to go around with packing tape in your bag just because you bought a new pair of shoes.  So when you can, you have to sort of massage the back of the shoe into submission.  You may not be able to see it in the photo below, but a bit of the back of the shoe has been pinched completely down.  After about 20 minutes of massaging, it becomes very pliable and stops rubbing.  Be sure your hands are clean and dry before you start this, especially if you're dealing with light colors, or delicate materials.  Then, as if you were kneading a

tiny bit of dough, push and press the edge of the shoe down toward the inside, then toward the outside.  Keep doing this till the material is no longer hard.  Use both hands.  The photo below shows one hand.  Coulda shown you a picture with two hands, but that would have necessitated pulling out the tripod, guessing at whether the shot was lined up and focused, and setting up the timer.  We'll go pretty far for glamour, but not that far.

A girl's got to draw the line somewhere.