I knew a girl who had gone to high school in Lakewood. She told me that when she was in school, clunky shoes were in style, and the school had a rule against it.
So she davka wore clunky shoes to school (It sounds like she may have been a similar type to you, JA, :). She was waiting for her teacher to yell at her. Instead, the teacher said something like, “Chanie, those shoes are not matim for you.”
She thought that was very smart of the teacher. If the teacher had yelled at her, she would have been like, “ha, ha, got ya”. Since the teacher responded the way she did, it made her think about it, and think about whether or not the teacher was right that it’s not her type.