J.Crew released their first round of early fall arrivals last week and for the first time in several rollouts, I was in the “love” camp for a lot of the items. I very rarely place full price orders on the first day of release and I placed a few for this week! Sadly, all of the items I had my eye on were backordered (which I suppose gives me some time to think about them) but the first item to arrive were the Harper Patent Flats in Garnet Flame. These shoes also come in Soft Desert, Caravan Blue and Black.

I am a complete sucker for anything in the garnet color family. Perhaps it’s my January birthday, or my 90’s teenager self (my favorite colors were maroon, hunter green and navy!) It was the color my bridesmaids wore in our wedding and well, I just love it.  And…at a price point lower than the Viv flats, I was sold. I’m not sure if they’re phasing out the Vivs but I guess it’s a possibility since I don’t think I saw any new styles this past rollout. I only have one pair of Vivs and several pair of the Factory counterpart Emery flats. I tried my best to capture the color of these shoes but I found it very difficult to photograph! First up…right out of the box.

J.Crew seems to be going with the new script logo on their shoe boxes and the dust bag…Ilike the change from the block lettering. The biggest difference I see out of the box compared to the Vivs are the square toe box, which after trying them on I believe is a way to make them look slimmer. They are very slim looking out of the box but do not feel tight on my feet. I ordered my almost always J.Crew size of 9.5 in these shoes which is also my Viv and Emery size and they were perfect.

As you can see, there is not a lot of toe cleavage, but there is some.

And here is a side by side with my Viv flats. I didn’t realize that I only own one pair of Vivs…and the metallic ones are clearly very worn. So…you can see an example of how these look after constant wear for a year (I’m admittedly pretty hard on my feet). And you can see that the square toe box actually creates more toe cleavage than the Vivs.

For me, an understandable concern with shoes as pointy as this is the inevitable bending that happened with my silver Vivs. I’m hoping with the dark color of these shoes that won’t be a concern.

Here’s a side shot (I’m so bad at getting these photos).  I also wanted to compare the color to my Martina wedges in Cabernet so I compared those as well. Aside from the Martinas being a little dusty (oops) the color of the Harper flats is definitely a bit richer, but they are very, very similar. The Harper flats have more of a polish in my opinion.

In my opinion, these are keepers. My Vivs definitely took a bit of breaking in and while these do seem comfortable out of the box, I anticipate that they could be problematic for some people with the more constricted shaped toe box. I personally love the patent leather but I would love to see these (and the Vivs!) in a plain leather. They’re definitely a fall/winter color and most of my cold weather items are packed away but I know these will incorporate well in to my wardrobe for work and will look just as good with a pair of jeans. I also recently purchased the J.Crew Factory Quilted Vest in Red Currant and these are a perfect match!

As an aside, I’m surprised we haven’t seen a full price promotion at J.Crew yet, so while I’m glad I snagged a few things, I’ll definitely be waiting for a promotion before I indulge in anything else for Fall.

So, what do you think? Have you tried the Harper flats? Love? Too pointy? Would love to hear what you think and thanks for visiting!