With the dawning of 2010, the Grand Mademoiselle anxiously awaits all those discounts on gorgeous shoes, once just out of reach in 2009 and now deliciously affordable. Traditionally, the post-holiday sales are a letdown, mainly because the most stylish shoes are already sold out, and all that's left is last season's oft-rifled, passed-over rejects, once trendy and cutting edge, but now woefully passe.

However, the key to making the most out of seasonal discounts is to forget what the trends were (and truth be told, what's "trendy" is often grossly misunderstood) in favor of focusing on footwear transcendence, eschewing the labels conjured up by those "in the know" (who tend to be so focused on what's hot now, and so driven by their superiors to conjure up the latest catch phrase to trap us into believing that if we don't have this shoe immediately, to wear with this outfit to this event, we're all of us doomed to a lifetime of suffering through our waking fashion lives in purgatory; trapped aimlessly in some circle of fashion hell as the Editors look down on us with pity for our lack of vision).

How misguided the Editors are, poor saps, for believing that what's new is what's best, and for denying the possibility of a visionary, post-trend renaissance among the style ...