I don't remember making the comment at all, or the shoes in question, but it's exactly the sort of thing I might have said, so I have zero reason to doubt it. I'm sure I didn't mean it in a cruel way, but I also remember that she had a kind of silly crush on me which I did not reciprocate, though I liked her fine as a friend. And at the reunion I remembered that she was a girl whose parents were immigrants from Mexico and didn't have a lot of money and someone, maybe her or a parent, had probably splurged a little on those shoes.

The fact she still remembered it twenty years later indicates she thought a lot about what I said, and it probably made her super self conscious. Ugh, just thinking about it now makes me feel like a major jackass.