I used to dress well, the way an extroverted retiree in Boca dresses well. I've always favored glitter, animal prints, big jewelry, faux fur, highly sculptural hair and anything that resembles a peignoir. While I admire chic, minimalist style — for instance, a bare-faced French woman in an olive-green sack dress riding a vintage bike — I have never succeeded in being that woman. I am powerless in the presence of, say, a T-shirt with a whimsical tiger wearing an Elizabethan ruff and horn-rimmed glasses, accompanied by a snappy feminist phrase. Or a baseball cap that says TARPON SPRINGS in all rhinestones. La mystique feminine! It is who I am! On this hill I die!

But I lost track of my personal style during the pandemic, went from stomping around an office to being one with the couch. My flippy dresses and crisp jackets metamorphosed into local brewery tank tops, leggings and fear. La misere.

Now, life has settled somewhere in the middle. I go to the office a bit and venture out more, but the energy is still crackling on a bad connection. So much has changed in two years, and fashion has left many of us behind. The vibe has shifted. The word "cheugy" became cheugy. My once fun Boca-lady clothes feel outdated and grumpy, like a Judy Greer character in a 2000s romcom. Just dozens of Judy Greers in the form of skinny jeans and de mode tops staring at me. Je suis vide. I am empty.

And this is how I found myself recently whimpering at the feet of tacky shoes.

We were in the kind of shoe store with rows of boxes and a utilitarian selection of wide sizes. We needed new sneakers for my stepchild. A modest quest, not an indulgent trip.

But voila! There they were, bathed in fluorescent big-box light. Cream-colored, iridescent faux snake, ankle strap, wave-stitched rainbow threading, and — gasp choke die — plastic gems. The heels were MIRRORS. Do you hear me? The HEELS WERE MIRRORS. I tried them on, knowing they would be foot prison, but they felt pillowy, comfortable, adorable.

Are you watching "The Gilded Age" on HBO? In these shoes, I was Bertha Russell, the new-money wife of 1800s New York City robber baron, George. She is tacky, and, um, representative of modern economic inequality. But if you can get past that, she is fantastic. She dares to drink from cups of colored glass. She shows cleavage. She arrives uninvited. She will plot the demise of everyone around her while wearing multiple peacock feathers.

Were the shoes expensive? That's what you want to know. I know it is. I'm not going to give a dollar figure because it doesn't matter. It will mean something different to everyone and lead to EMAILS and @ SIGNS. I was not exactly in a Gucci store. But these pointless shoes cost more than I would normally spend on pointless shoes. I walked away.

I believe my husband spied something flicker in me, the way George Russell oozed pity when Bertha hosted a gala with food for hundreds in her garish manor and no one showed. A tiny flame of tackiness. Maybe a lick of yearning for my old self?

"Throw them on the pile," he said, holding the child's sneakers and some shoes he had chosen for himself that resembled, well, lizard skin. We were all losing it.

"No, you don't have to..."

"LET ME DO SOMETHING NICE FOR MY WIFE," he declared, heroically, proudly, as if wearing a silky cravat and not a Tampa Bay Lightning T-shirt. He was buying out the inventory of the ladies' charity bazaar because those old crones had insulted his wife! He was noble! I swooned!

Now, you are saying, if you are married, don't you share money? Yes, mostly. But shut up, please, that is not the point.

At that moment, we chose ugly shoes. We decided to accept a bit of excess in an age when any sort of unessential joy feels apologetic and wrong. Our shoes, our weird, pointless shoes, were a tiny door leading us back to a place of personality, of color and form, of joie de vivre.

No, I have not worn them yet. But when I do, watch out. I will show up uninvited.

Stephanie Hayes is a columnist at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. Follow her at @stephhayes on Twitter or @stephrhayes on Instagram.

Photo credit: Sponchia at Pixabay