Topshop majesty ballet pumps - don't buy em

Topshop is having a very good winter if what I saw when I popped in there to treat myself to my first new thing in ages was anything to go buy. One part of the shop was a veritable sea of covetable camel, cable-knit and shearling. Yum.
Sadly, my treat budget didn't stretch to any of that. What it did stretch to though was a pair of pretty tweedy ballet pumps, with a Chanel-esque black ribbon bow and diamante detail. Despite the name of this blog, I am rarely attracted to shiny things because on my budget most of the shiny things I can afford just look very cheap. I feel similarly about lace - if you can't afford the good stuff it's best avoided. But these seemed to be the exception. Look, aren't they pretty? And only £28.

Imagine them worn with turned up Max Mara black cropped trousers, a crisp white Aquascutum shirt and a chunky grey Cos jumper... and you will have a vision of what I was happily wearing to work on Friday. The shoes even managed to put a spring in my step, even if they were simultaneously rubbing most of the skin off the back of my right foot.

Sadly though this love affair was to be all to brief. The diamante studs started falling out around lunchtime. I spent half an hour in the hellish environs of the returns queue at Topshop's Oxford Circus branch on Sunday to swap them for another pair but the same thing happened before I even left the shop. So a refund was granted. 

I'm not casting any aspersions on Topshop, who accepted the fault and did not hesitate in giving me my money back, but the whole thing made me a little bit sad. If you can't treat yourself to the odd pair of shoes without them falling apart, what is the point of earning money?

Anyway, I'm back off the embellishments for a while again and I would suggest that if your happiness depends on your shoes, even only slightly, don't buy these ones.