Irregular Choice Cinderella: Sparkling Slipper Review

Today I have the first of my Irregular Choice Cinderella shoes to review, which I'm very excited about. I got a bit exasperated with the setting, as I forgot how terrible the lighting is in Scotland in winter and my original idea for the backdrop was just not working at all. It was such a cool concept, but no, it looked stupid, so I had to scrap that and find something else. Not totally sold on this one either, but I have a couple of variations for the other pairs I bought.

So the shoes are Sparkling Slipper, which were one of the styles we saw in the previews before release. They came in two other colours, under different style names, but the pale silver, spoke most to me as being a replica of the glass slipper, so I went with those. When I got to the front of the queue on Irregular Choice, they'd already sold out in my size (and by this point had disappeared from all the independents too), but I was lucky that Schuh were having technical issues in uploading their stock and thankfully they were selling these, albeit about an hour or so later! It wouldn't be a limited edition shoe launch without a little stress though, would it?
So onto the shoe and Sparkling Slipper are a classic court with a scalloped edge (or V shape at the centre front and back sides) and from afar look to be silver. When you look up close though, you can see they actually contain lots of other lovely colours. The edge of the shoe is piped in pale blue, to avoid the glitter rubbing against the skin or tights.
They have a softly pointed and upturned toe and the vamp is cut quite low at the front. The 3 3/4" heel is blue crackled, metallic with embroidered stars all over. Halfway up the heel is a metal bow ring in silver.
At the back of the shoe there's a large double bow in white glitter, but once more, when you zoom in you can find other colours in there too. Much like My Cup Of Tea from the recent Alice collection, the bows have a lot of depth. They stick upwards and out the back a lot. I also find myself knocking them together when walking, which I didn't with MCOT, so they are obviously a little wider. Likely down to the fact they aren't soft, so don't drape over the shoe. Covered in glitter, they are hard and therefore protrude straight out. It's not going to damage anything if they do hit each other, it's just something to be aware of.
The inners feature a pale blue cloud and castle print. Irregular Choice is embroidered in gold threads, while Disney and Cinderella are contained within a pale pink applique heart, written in blue. The soles differ for the right and left shoes, but all styles have the same two soles in this range (unlike in Alice). The soles match the box, with the horse and carriage on one and Cinderella with the Fairy Godmother on the other. You can see the box in more detail in this post.
I always say you can count on Irregular Choice to give you the unexpected and when news broke of a Cinderella collection, we were naturally all imagining the famous glass slipper, reinterpreted IC style. Of course they surprised us by opting for glitter uppers over transparency, then adding some magic in the form of lights! Dotted along the outer side of each shoe and within the bows at the back are tiny little LED lights. They aren't noticeable (when unlit), unless you really look for them and have an idea where they are situated.  They are activated by pressure, through walking and go off in a short flashing sequence. I mentioned on Shoesday Tuesday yesterday that they are a little sensitive but also fickle! Sometimes you'll barely touch them and it'll set them off, other times you are stomping and nothing lights up. I suppose because they aren't rechargeable you perhaps wouldn't want them going off constantly whilst walking, so this will prolong their life. When they do light-up, it's far more flashy and brighter than I anticipated and obviously the darker it is, the brighter they appear. They are real show-stoppers.
I spoke about the sizing a lot in my Shoesday review of the bronze pair yesterday, so head over there for that. The good news is, this morning I managed to find the silver pair in the smaller size I required. After trying both sizes on again today, I'm slightly more confident that the smaller size will stretch to become comfier and that the bigger size are slackening already and will become really too big to wear. You can find them in stock here and use NOV2SP for 20% off, which is valid until the end of the month.  What do you think, do you like the IC interpretation of a magical glass slipper?

Post contains affiliate links.  No items were gifted, opinions my own.