“The trends I am really feeling for the moment are color and the gladiator sandal. For Fall, I am loving fringe.” (Fred Allard, Nine West Creative Director)

Are you as conflicted about gladiator sandals as I am? On the one hand, gladiators are undeniably the It shoes this season. Celebrities are wearing them; reporters are writing articles on them; I reluctantly point out that there was even a Cathy cartoon about them.

On the other hand, I am not alone in thinking that gladiators may not be the most flattering shoes ever to touch pavement. And, let’s not forget: There was a Cathy cartoon about them. How can we ignore that?

My mind aswirl with this conflict, I set out with a single objective in mind: Create a short list of flattering and comfortable gladiators, that don’t cost a fortune (in case-gasp-they go out of style), and that actually could be working pieces of a non-celebrity wardrobe. Let’s answer once and for all if this is a trend worth embracing.

My first step was to check out the designer scene, to see what the big boys were up to. And, boy, are they making some gorgeous glads! Not surprising, of course; this is what they do. Dior’s now-famous Extreme Gladiator is fantastic, as are the sandals from Stuart Weitzman, Jimmy Choo, and Manolo Blahnik. Of course, for one reason or another - too expensive, too high, too unavailable - these shoes are not right for us. However, they can at least inform our choices: Perhaps we can find the designer touches we like - the metallic finish, the delicate straps - in a more downscale version.

With this in mind, I visited a few of my favorite online shoe stores, intent on building our short list:

• Zappos.com: A search for “gladiator” returned 3 pairs of gladiator sandals and 1 men’s thermal top. Hmm, perhaps they are not keeping up with the blogs - someone needs to alert them to the gladiator trend! Like the LA Lakers, this is not their finest hour. Of my 3 choices, I opted for the gladiator from Matiko ($95).
• Heels.com carries a respectable 17 picks, mostly flats, overall a nice selection. Our candidate from this site is the “Tells” from Enzo Angiolini, in yellow ($89.99):
• Piperlime.com offers a manageable 61 choices. Of all the sites, piperlime.com seems the most attuned to the trend: “gladiator” actually made it to the site’s left-side navigation, making it easy as pie to find what you’re looking for. Our candidate from this site is the “Hottie” from Charles by Charles David ($65).
• Shoes.com offers a whopping 79 pairs. I cannot resist passing along the fact that they carry Paris Hilton’s entries in the market: the “Women’s Goddess” and (in what I can only assume is a reference to the 1966 movie One Million Years B.C., which was set approximately one million years before the Romans were wearing gladiator sandals) the “Women’s Raquel”! As wonderful as I’m sure these shoes are, they are not my pick. Instead, I’m going with the Women’s Bitten from Via Spiga ($198).
• Nordstrom.com, as usual, carries the biggest selection, an impressive 142 pairs of gladiators. Hard to choose, so I’m going with a standard, the “Gladio” from Stuart Weitzman ($265).

With our short-list in hand, I tackled the hardest part of our mission: What in the world do you wear with gladiator sandals? None of us wants to suffer the ridicule that rained down on Gwyneth Paltrow this spring, when she paired her gladiators with a toga dress.

Luckily, the web being the web, I found lots of good advice. The blog Thumbelina Fashionista offers concrete suggestions (with pictures) of what to pair with gladiators - among them a pencil skirt with leather jacket, a pretty floral dress, and flowy and simple dresses. And, more kudos for piperlime.com: Their resident stylist Rachel Zoe offers a short blurb on this very topic. She suggests pairing glads with cool summer dresses, daring denim shorts, and chic oversized sweaters. Finally, according to Ed Burstell, senior vice president and general merchandise manager of accessories and footwear at Bergdorf Goodman, quoted in this article from the NY Observer, “[gladiators] go with casual, they go with denim, they go with summer dresses at all lengths.”

So, are we convinced yet? I am! I say, embrace the gladiator! (But fringe for fall? I’m not so sure I’m ready for that. )