I am a huge fan of the Cole Haan oxfords, both the regular and platform versions. In my experience, the platform version is a bit stiffer and requires a few wears to fully break in, but once it does, it's spectacular. I have the knit version and it is lightweight and extremely easy to wear. Like a dressed up sneaker. It was my shoe of choice in London. I sprayed it with waterproofing and despite being knit, it kept me dry enough in a complete downpour. I say "dry enough" because I would not have trusted it for longer than the 15 or 20 minutes that I was out -- the tips of my socks felt slightly damp when I took them off that night. But the shoe dried out immediately with no damage.