Do you wear good shoes?

It's Friday night and here I am pondering about shoes. I know this isn't really sewing related other than you need to be wearing shoes in order to show off your lovely handmade items to the outside world, but I'm going to blog about it anyway!

The reason shoes are on my mind is because I went out to buy some shoes for my new job yesterday. I had originally planned to wear a pair of black trainers that I already had but was informed that I wasn't allowed to wear trainers and having worked in a hospital wearing ballet pumps and ending up with all sorts of things on my feet or soaked into my shoes I decided I'd need to buy a new pair. This new pair would need to be of the sensible, boring variety, they would need to cover the top of my foot (to protect my foot from said undesirable fluids), they would need to be comfortable (I'm going to be on my feet a lot), they would need to be black (have I ever mentioned that I hate black shoes? Not sure why, I just do, I much prefer colourful) and they would have to fit into my student budget. I did a bit of googling first to see what types of shoes came recommended by nurses and found out about the Clarks unstructured range which came very highly recommended and about Hotter shoes. I decided that because the summer sales are on now is a good time to go and buy new shoes from these places which are outside of my normal budget, so off I went!
The mary jane styles that I liked left too much of my foot exposed and obviously all the black shoes that were suitable weren't in the sale, what a surprise!! I tried on a pair of shoes that had been highly recommended by nurses and midwives and fitted all the criteria:

Seriously, I put one of these on and they won instantly, how they looked didn't matter anymore, it was like my foot was wearing pillows! They were so comfortable and no other shoe could live up to them. Only one problem; the price tag! £60 :-( Luckily I am a bargain hunter and somehow I've managed to find them online for half the price which made me very happy and hopefully they'll be with me soon. Though I am slightly worried that I'll never want to take them off...

ANYWAY, all this got me thinking about the shoes that I wear normally. Clarks is an institution in the UK for it's comfortable shoes (though I've held a grudge against them for about 7 years since my mum lovingly bought me a pair when I had a job in retail and the arch support meant that they killed my feet - she didn't believe me until she tried wearing them herself and had the same problem!) but they do have a bit of a reputation as being an old lady shoe shop. And judging by the majority of the clientele in Hotter, so do they. But is it wrong to look after your feet? And is it worth throwing street cred out of the window for the sake of your feet? Maybe it is. I've never given it much consideration before, I've been wearing cheap, thin shoes for so long that I forgot that there are shoes out there which actually provide support and padding for your feet. My shoes generally consist of ballet pumps where the soles are so thin that it feels like you're walking on the pavement and they get soaked through every time it rains and because my feet seem to be wider than the average woman's I end up with them rubbing either my little toe or my big toe. I never notice at first but with prolonged wear it becomes a problem and just recently I've been finding it difficult to find shoes that don't put pressure on the tops or sides of my toes. I've said it before that I've always been about quantity over quality but I have lots of cheap shoes that I barely ever wear, maybe it's time that I cross over and start buying more expensive shoes that I will wear! And despite having always dismissed Clarks, actually, I quite liked some of their shoes, here's some examples:

So my question is this, do you put comfort over style? Do you wear shoes to support and look after your feet or do you wear cheap shoes like me and suffer the consequences?