You don’t have to tell me about it. I know.

I freely admit that I spend an inordinate amount of time looking at shoes on the several zillion Internet pages devoted to footwear.

I write frequently about the absorbing topic of shoes. I wear shoes — every single day — and notice, every single day, the shoes upon the feet of everyone I know and nearly everyone I encounter.

And since I like shoes so damned much, I rarely find a shoe that I absolutely abhor. Oh, I have tried to be a H8ER but somehow I’ve managed to round out my shoe wardrobe with Crocs and clogs alike … and so that you know I do have taste, let me state that they in no way make up the bulk of that wardrobe.

So anyway, it was with great surprise that a couple days ago I ran across a boot that was so hideous, so repellent, so transformationally butt-ugly that I not only gasped in horror when I saw them, I (and I do not say this lightly) I actually had a nightmare about them.

It is true. Just look at these things, would you? They are the Vivienne Westwood Regent Boot and they retail for a whopping $725. Now, despite my professed love for shoes, I am truly not a haute couture shoe maven extraordinaire. No, those fashionistas who really know their stuff would no doubt laugh at my provincialism when it comes to high-end footwear. Oh, I would generally know a Christian Louboutin when I saw one, and for a while I got a weekly email from Ferragamo just so I could sigh over beauty that would never be mine. But honestly, I know very little about Vivienne Westwood, and a little Googling shows me that most of her stuff is a tad funky and even appealing, speaking as someone who strives for a look beyond the boring normal.

There’s nothing normal about the Regent Boot.

I can’t find a photo online of someone actually wearing this thing, but I have to believe the Caucasian-buff leg tone would make any wearer’s own gams look like East Germany female weightlifters’. I shudder to think what … what … toe would be conjured up by a startled onlooker to a gal garbed in the Regent. It is also amusing to think of what an African American lady might look like clad in these numbers. (Not that any black woman with taste would be caught dead in these boots — even with an appropriately shaded suede calf.)

The 4-inch heel, while interesting apart from its configuration as some sort of frightening faux-mule, just makes my blood run cold. Who wants the appearance of their very own heel to resemble that of a young orangutan fresh from the jungle?

So while most of my nightmares are much more run-of-the-mill — you know, a zombie here, a haunted house there — this boot was able to transcend such normal nightmare fodder and give me an actual footwear night terror. Which is really saying something given, as I say, how much I think about shoes.

I’m probably going to have to go back to that weekly Ferragamo newsletter to get over it.