A red sneaker is a good start if a bold statement shoe is a new direction for you. Go with a classic style if you want to wear sneakers with a large range of outfits, including jeans or trousers. Remember to keep your outfit lowkey when you want your shoes to be the stars. Rock a red canvas shoe with an otherwise neutral outfit of khaki pants and a white jersey tee. Add a camelcolored cableknit sweater for cooler weather and accessorize with a brown belt so that the shoes keep the spotlight.

my twenties I used to seek out independent stores so I could buy up old stock for resale and to wear myself, Aspden told me, when we met in London. is a German brand and its archive has a design language that is very European there were German and French translations on the shoe boxes. It seemed exotic to me, growing up near Blackburn.

Schweizer told me that each worker at GirardPerregaux gets their own 6,500 euro watch after working for the company for two years. You expect then, to see every wrist bedecked, but I been paying attention, and the most expensive watch I seen was a 450 euro Tissot, with most people wearing less expensive Swiss brands like Certina or Hamilton. After a day or so exploring La ChauxdeFonds, it made sense. This is a workingclass town, every bit as much as Detroit. The roughly 9,000 workers are well paid, but they not fancy. They not the 0.1% found so often in Geneva diplomats, Zurich bankers and on the slopes of Gstaad, Klosters Valentino Shoes Outlet and Zermatt.

Ever scribble on your tennis shoes? Moms for years have bawled out kids for trying to enliven their footwear with amateur artwork. http://www.valentinoshoesboutique.com/ But Cypressbased shoe company Vans, with its annual Custom Culture design contest, has put sneaker art on a pedestal. high schools are competing for a $50,000 grand prize by turning a blank pair of Vans into artwork with a rubber sole.

The Roches (Warner Bros., 1979) In the late 1970s, women across America sat in circles, speaking and listening intently. These simple acts of consciousnessraising were fundamental to secondwave feminism, throwing the light of everyday experience upon the false structures of sexism. The selftitled 1979 debut album by The Roches made consciousnessraising into music. It became a cult hit, turning Maggie, Terre and Suzzy Roche New Jerseyraised siblings who embodied both cultural feminism and Greenwich Village boho cool into sneakerclad heroines of the folk scene. Selfwritten songs about pregnancy, work, family tensions, complex love and the feminine mystique gained clarity from the utterly clear, deliberately imperfect harmonies The Roches had mastered singing holiday carols in the street. Artrock guitarist Robert Fripp produced The Roches, and is often credited for its uniquely intimate feel. But that's wrong. His decision to mix these songs "in audio verit," so that everything in the speaker hit the ear with equal weight, was inspired by the way the sisters made their music, sitting in that consciousnessraising formation and vocalizing into each other's faces. Some male critics found The Roches startlingly intimate, but in its wryness and honesty, many women heard exactly what they were thinking. Ann Powers (NPR Music)