Little Black Dress Shoes: Color Ideas Beyond Black

I was on the floor of my closet at eleven at night, cross legged, surrounded by shoes I’d pulled out of a bin I hadn’t opened since March, because I had a wedding invite for Saturday and exactly one black dress that still fit the way it fit two years ago. The dress wasn’t the problem. The dress has never been the problem. It’s a plain black midi from Everlane that I bought secondhand for eighteen dollars, and at this point I’ve worn it enough times that the cost per wear is something like forty cents, which is the kind of number that makes me want to frame the receipt. The problem, sitting there at eleven at night with tights half on, was shoes. I had four pairs of black shoes in that bin and every single one of them made the outfit look like I was attending a work potluck I didn’t want to go to, or worse, a funeral I hadn’t been invited to but showed up to anyway out of habit.

That’s the thing nobody tells you about a black dress. Black shoes are the default answer, they’re the answer that requires zero thought, and that is exactly why they can flatten an outfit into something forgettable. I’ve done this to myself more times than I’d like to admit, black dress, black shoes, black tights if it’s cold, and I walk into a room looking like the outfit equivalent of a beige wall. Nice wall. Nobody remembers the wall.

The wedding on Saturday, for the record, I wore red shoes I’d forgotten I owned, and a coworker at my actual job, the homeware one, not a fashion job, stopped me by the coffee machine on Monday to ask where I got them. That’s not nothing. That’s a person who saw the same black dress I’ve worn to at least six events noticing it like it was new, because the shoes changed the entire math of the outfit without changing a single thing about the dress itself.

So this is me going through the actual color options, the ones I’ve tested, the ones that earned a spot in my good column and the ones that did not, because “wear black shoes with a black dress” is the least interesting sentence in fashion and I refuse to write it again.

[Little Black Dress Shoes]

Red Shoes, the Ones You’ll Actually Reach For

Red shoes are the ones I recommend first because they’re the least scary version of “not black” while still doing something. I bought my red pair, a low block heel from a consignment shop near my apartment, for fourteen dollars, and I’ve worn them nine times since, which puts them at about a dollar fifty six a wear, and I did that math twice because the first time I got a number that seemed too good and I didn’t trust myself.

The trick with red is the shade. A true red, the kind that leans slightly orange, reads as festive and a little bit fun, good for a wedding, a birthday dinner, a work event where you’re allowed to have a personality for three hours. A red that leans toward wine or brick is a completely different shoe, quieter, works better for something like a dinner reservation you actually paid for yourself. I learned this the hard way at a holiday party two years ago when I wore a bright cherry red pump with a black dress and someone asked if I was dressed as a specific cartoon character. I was not. I was dressed as someone who hadn’t thought about undertones.

Patent leather in red is where I’d spend a little more if you’re buying new, because matte red fabric shoes scuff at the toe within a handful of wears and there’s no fixing that, I’ve tried a suede eraser, I’ve tried a magic sponge, nothing brings back a scuffed matte toe. Patent wipes clean with a damp cloth and looks the same at wear nine as it did at wear one.

[Red Heels]

Nude Isn’t Boring, It’s Just Been Done Badly

I avoided nude shoes for years because the first pair I owned, bought from a mall store for twenty two dollars back when I had less sense about fabric content, was a shade of tan that matched exactly nobody’s skin, including mine, and it made my legs look like they’d been cut off at the ankle. That’s the actual risk with nude, it’s not a boring choice, it’s a choice that requires you to know your own skin tone well enough to buy the right jar of paint, basically.

Done right, nude shoes with a black dress do something specific, they make your leg line look longer, because there’s no color break at the ankle the way there is with black shoes and bare legs, or any other color for that matter. It’s an old trick and it’s old because it works, I just needed to actually match the shoe to my skin instead of grabbing whatever the store called “nude” that season, which is often code for “beige, deal with it.”

I finally got it right with a pair from a consignment sale, six dollars, barely worn, in a shade that’s close enough to my actual skin that from four feet away my legs genuinely look uninterrupted. I’ve worn them to two work dinners and one baby shower, twelve dollars back into cost per wear feels generous already and I’ve barely started using them.

This is a color to try on in daylight, not under store lighting, and not from a photo online if you can help it.

[Nude Heels]

Gold and Silver, for When the Dress Needs a Job to Do

Metallic shoes are the ones I reach for when the black dress itself is doing very little, no print, no texture, no interesting neckline, just a plain black shape, and I need the outfit to have somewhere for the eye to land. Gold does this differently than silver, and I didn’t understand that distinction until I owned both.

Gold reads warmer, more evening, more “I have somewhere to be after this.” I’ve got a pair of gold strappy sandals I bought for nineteen dollars at an estate sale, still with the tags on, which either means someone bought them and never wore them or someone wore them exactly once to a wedding and decided sandals with that much strap situation weren’t for them. Either way, nineteen dollars for shoes with tags on is a good day, and I’ve worn them to four events since, which is not a huge number but the shoes are the kind of thing that only gets worn to actual occasions, not Tuesdays.

Silver is cooler, a little more restrained, and honestly the one I reach for more in winter because it reads almost like jewelry rather than a full statement. I’ve got a silver flat, not a heel, from the thrift store I’ve decided is mine, the one on the corner with the Tuesday restock, and it was seven dollars, and I wear it constantly because a flat metallic shoe does the same visual job as a heel without the thing where my feet are screaming by nine p.m.

Buy metallic in a finish that isn’t too shiny if you only want one pair. A slightly brushed or matte metallic looks like a shoe. A full mirror shine finish looks like a costume prop if the light hits it wrong, and I say that as someone who has been the person standing under bad venue lighting looking like a disco ball’s ankle.

[Metallic Heels]

Jewel Tones, the Ones I Was Wrong About

I held onto a rule for actual years that colored shoes with a black dress needed to be either neutral or red, and everything else was trying too hard. I was wrong, and I know exactly when I figured that out, it was an emerald green pump I almost didn’t buy at a sample sale because it felt like a color for a dress, not a shoe.

I bought it anyway, eleven dollars, the math was too good to overthink, and it’s become one of the more complimented pairs I own, which tells you something about how much I’d underrated the whole category. Emerald against black does something a red shoe doesn’t, it reads a little more unexpected, a little less like you grabbed the first “not black” option in the store, and it works particularly well if the dress is very simple, since the shoe becomes the whole point of interest.

Cobalt blue does something similar but colder, more architectural somehow, better for a daytime black dress, a work event, something with actual structure to it rather than a soft drapey fabric. I don’t own a cobalt pair yet, that’s an admitted gap, I’ve tried two pairs at the thrift store and both had a heel wobble that told me the glue was already failing, so those went back on the shelf, no matter how good a five dollar price tag looks.

The rule I’d give here is fit the saturation to the dress. A deep, almost dusty jewel tone works with a soft or textured black dress. A bright, saturated jewel tone wants a plain, structured black dress so it doesn’t end up fighting the fabric for attention.

[Jewel Tone Heels]

White Shoes, Only for Daylight, and I Mean It

White shoes with a black dress is a combination I resisted because it felt like it belonged to a wedding guest specifically, not to a normal Tuesday human, and then I wore a white slingback with a black slip dress to a daytime baby shower in July and got asked twice where it was from. Twice. I counted.

The thing about white is it only works, for me, in daylight, warm weather, casual settings. An evening event, especially anything indoors with actual lighting and a dress code, white shoes read a little bit bridal, and not in the good way, in the “did she not get the memo” way. I learned this at a rehearsal dinner where I nearly wore white flats and my own gut told me no about forty minutes before I left the house, so I swapped to the red pair instead and dodged a genuinely bad photo.

My white pair cost sixteen dollars new, on sale, because I couldn’t find a decent white leather shoe secondhand that wasn’t already yellowing at the toe, which is the actual risk with buying white shoes used, they age visibly in a way black and red don’t. I’ve worn them five times this summer, so we’re at three dollars twenty a wear, which is fine, not thrilling, but fine, and I expect that number to drop fast once next summer rolls around.

Stick to daytime, stick to warm months, and check the toe box in daylight before you buy secondhand white, because a slightly cream shoe photographs fine and looks tired in person.

[White Heels]

Final Thoughts

If I’m adding this all up, and I am, because that’s apparently what I do now instead of just enjoying clothes like a normal person, the running total for this particular closet experiment sits somewhere around ninety five dollars across five pairs of shoes, most of them secondhand, most of them worn far more than the price tag would suggest they’d earn. That’s a good month for the ledger. Not a great month, buy number three back in spring still holds the record for worst decision, but a good one.

The actual point isn’t the math, though I’ll never stop doing it out loud. It’s that a black dress is a blank space, not a finished outfit, and the shoe is doing more work than you’re giving it credit for if you keep reaching for black on black on black.

Red gave that coworker something to ask me about at the coffee machine. Nude gave my legs an extra two inches I didn’t pay for. Green shoes I almost didn’t buy turned into the pair people remember. None of that happens if the dress and the shoes match and disappear into each other.

Try one color you’d normally skip. Check the shoe in daylight before you commit, especially white and nude, because store lighting lies to you more than any salesperson ever could. And if the math works and the color’s a little bit wrong for you anyway, buy it. I always do, and so far the ledger’s forgiven me for it more often than not.