Irregular Choice Alice: Tea With Alice

Today I have my penultimate Irregular Choice 'Alice In Wonderland' shoe to show you, Tea With Alice. I've previously posted Flowers Can't Talk, All Mad Here and One Lump Or Two? and will link at the bottom to The Shoe Girl Diaries posts where I've worn the shoes. Tea With Alice were the one shoe from my Alice wishlist, that I perhaps could've lived without. Don't get me wrong, they are lovely, but I liked the detailing on others more. In saying that, I just knew I'd get loads of wear out of them, so they'd be worth buying. Unusually for IC, they were rather plain and definitely the most simple style of this collection. The colour was a big draw for me, it looked beautiful and is it just me or could you actually see Alice wearing these, if she could only choose one style from this range?

So, the simple shoe-boot shape is similar to Pin Yin (panda heels). They are single soled, lace up and have an almond shaped toe. The uppers are entirely glitter, in the most charming shade of blue. In the contours of the shoe in the light, the blue flashes a brighter green, which is stunning to see.  I've even seen a lilac sheen, which is just visible in some of these photos.   
As they are Irregular Choice, you know no matter how 'plain' they may be (and I realise to non-IC wearers these are anything but), they'll come with awesome details. I love the heart shaped eyelets for the organza laces. Dolly Mixture from last summer also featured this and it's so cute. There's metallic trim around the top of the shoe and tongue in pearlised blue, which you can also find around the middle of the vamp and the centre of the lace-up bit. The laces are white organza ribbon, but with metal aglets on the ends making them 'proper' laces. I much prefer this to fabric ties that fray and look messy easily, but the organza is much prettier than regular laces. I do need to untie these to get them on and off.
The shoe itself is quite hard. I bought the size up as I tried both in Pin Yin and the size 5 (my regular size) were virtually impossible to get into. There's not much extra room in the size up. So unless your feet are on the small or narrow side for your size, I'd size up for comfort.
I spoke more about the Alice heel in my other post and it's the same on this shoe, so I won't repeat myself. The one difference is, this one has a white heel tip (Flowers Can't Talk had bronze). The heel measures 4" and there's no platform. They are easy to walk on and comfortable. Alice is mostly sheltered beneath the shoe, not sticking out the back like the flamingo heel. Same for sideways, she's pretty contained and it's unlikely you'll find the heels clunking together when walking, like R2D2 or the dinosaurs.
The soles on these are the favourite of all my Alice shoes. Like the other styles the right and left shoe are different, with a close-up of Alice drinking from the bottle on one and a newly shrunken Alice struggling to hold the bottle on the other. They have the same style where the main photo from the film is on the base of the shoe which merges into the mixed Alice print from your instep to heel.  I've said before that I'm not one for 'saving' my soles from wear, but I'm definitely a little tempted with these. They have the same comfortable lining that all styles in this collection had and you can see that better in my other posts.
I've been a magpie since birth, so anything sparkly is usually a winner for me. These definitely are; simple but rather wonderful. If you'd like to see them on the foot, I wore them here. I've also worn Flowers Can't Talk here and One Lump Or Two? here and will have another Alice pair for you on Shoesday Tuesday next week, so look out for that.  What do you think of these?