Structure with category setting

I’m pretty sure i missunderstood you…

Approach: Categories & Terms (built in taxonomies)

You have got categories (hierarchical built in taxonomy) & terms (non-hierarchical built in taxonomy). You can also assign terms to categories. So i’d say, you can take the following approach using the built in taxonomies:

• shoes (parent category)
• • boots (child category)
• • sneakers (child category)
• • other shoes (default child category)

and then use terms inside additional categories like:

• color (parent cateogry)
• • cyan (term)
• • magenta (term)
• • yellow (term)
• • black (term)
• laces (parent category)
• • long (term)
• • medium (term)
    and so on …

This would give you the ability to list all shoes on a category page. Then you can further list all sneakers on one page. You can also list all shoes that got long laces and red color.

Templates

Take a look at (for eg.) here for more information about the query for different archive (category/term) pages and how to query/retrieve multiple taxonomies at one page.