Michaela Dante, 26, had never purchased a luxury product before her wedding, but she decided her big day was a good excuse to splurge on a pair of heels.
“I figured I’m not going to wear my dress again, but I’ll definitely wear a pair of shoes that I can have for anniversaries and special occasions and pop them on when I want to feel beautiful,” the Bay Area bride, who is getting married on July 20, told Business Insider. “I kind of just assumed that buying the luxury route guaranteed that they would have some longevity.”
Dante said she considered shoes from several different high-end retailers because she was searching for heels with a fairly specific height. In April, she found what she thought were the perfect shoes at Jimmy Choo.
But she said the shoes broke before the wedding, leading to a weeklong, frustrating experience with staff from the store.
Dante told BI that representatives from Jimmy Choo apologized to her for her experience on Tuesday. The brand did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
The Aurelie 65 shoes Dante selected were 65 millimeters tall, made of patent leather, and had a pointed toe.
The pearl-studded strap on top of the shoe completed the look, which Dante said she loved because her wedding dress features pearl detailing. She also said she was surprised by how comfortable they were.
The shoes are listed for $995 online. According to a receipt reviewed by BI, Dante paid $1,085.95 for them after taxes.
Dante said she barely took the shoes out of the box after buying them. However, she brought them to one of her final wedding dress fittings in June to ensure the dress was hemmed to the height of her heels.
“I had them on to place the bustle,” she said of the shoes. “When I took them off to hand them to my mom — because I’ve been keeping them in their box in their dust bag with the stuffing in them — she was like, ‘What is this?'”
That’s when Dante saw that the leather was ripped in the crease of the point at the front of one of the shoes.
The tear wasn’t huge. But Dante said she had worn the shoes for under five minutes, so she was concerned they wouldn’t hold up for her wedding.
“I wasn’t too worried about it at that point because I was like, ‘Well, obviously they’ll fix it,” Dante said.
Dante said she first tried to rectify the issue on the phone, calling the Jimmy Choo location where she bought the shoes later that day.
She said the sales associate she spoke to — who was not the same person who initially sold her the shoes — first chalked the rip up to “normal wear and tear,” not seeming to understand Dante hadn’t worn the shoes for more than five minutes maximum.
“It almost felt like I was getting a runaround,” Dante said. “My concerns weren’t really being addressed.”
Dante told BI she then went to Jimmy Choo in person to speak with the salesperson who originally sold her the shoes because she would know more about the purchase. When she arrived, she said the employee didn’t seem to know the details of her situation despite her coworker promising Dante she would inform her. She also said she could do nothing about the rip since Dante had technically worn the shoe, but she offered to speak to her manager.
Dante said the salesperson and her manager agreed to swap the pair, telling her it was a “one-time” deal.
When the salesperson opened the box of replacement shoes, Dante said she discovered the new pair was broken, too, as the fishing wire that held the pearls was detached on one side of one of the shoes.
“At that point, I kind of felt sick to my stomach because I was like, ‘What are we paying for when we’re buying luxury items?'” Dante said. “I felt pretty stupid for doing it in the first place.”
Dante considered buying a different pair of Jimmy Choo shoes but ultimately decided she just wanted a refund on the original pair.
She said the employee told her she couldn’t refund the shoes without her manager’s presence, promising the manager would call her to finish the transaction.
“It was kind of like a waiting game of hearing back from the manager, and I never did,” she said.
After several days of waiting for a call, Dante said she called the store back to speak to the manager. Again, she said, there was a communication breakdown, and the manager was unaware of the details of Dante’s situation.
“He knew that there was a damaged pair of shoes, but he didn’t know that he was supposed to call me,” Dante said, adding that the manager told her that her issue was not “really high on the priority list.”
“It was just very unprofessional,” she said.
Dante also said the manager didn’t seem inclined to give her a refund until she told him she had posted a TikTok video about her experience with the store. The video she posted on June 14 had over 9.1 million views as of Friday.
@michaelarose123 I would like to say that with everything happening in the world this is really such a privileged problem to have, but regardless jimmy choo is selling such expensive product that i really dont think there is any excuse for something to be clearly not made with integrity, and for a situation not to be handled with grace by the store. Do better jimmy choo. #jimmychoo @Jimmy Choo
Dante told BI she expected better customer service from a luxury retailer.
“As a company, if Jimmy Choo is selling this kind of a product, they really should be providing some sort of an experience, and it wasn’t like that,” she said.
Dante said Jimmy Choo’s president and the vice president for the regional sales team for her area called her on Tuesday to apologize for her experience with the brand. She told BI the brand also gifted her a replacement pair of shoes and a handbag.
“I felt glad to know that they understood why the situation was stressful and that they wanted to make it right,” Dante said of hearing from the brand. She added that she was glad their contact could lead the company to “implement better practices moving forward if others have faulty products that need rectification.”
Dante said in a TikTok video about Jimmy Choo’s apology that she plans to wear the replacement shoes the brand is sending her to her wedding. But she told BI she won’t be in a rush to buy another luxury product herself.
“We live in a time when it seems like everybody has a designer bag,” she said. “It seems like this really special thing to do, and I don’t necessarily think that it is, which honestly made me feel better because it’s like, ‘OK, I’m not really missing out on anything.'”
“I thought there was a guarantee in designer items,” she added. “But designer doesn’t mean they’re going to hold up and last better than a non-designer item.”
