Nothing But Shoes

Why do women endure the discomfort of high heels?
High heels are uncomfortable and make walking more difficult. Prolonged use can injure the feet, knees and back. So why do women keep wearing them?

The short answer seems to be that women in heels are more likely to attract favourable notice.

In Sense And Sensibility, Jane Austen describes the character Elinor Dashwood as having a “delicate complexion, regular features, and… remarkably pretty figure”.

But Austen describes Elinor’s sister, Marianne, as “still handsomer. Her form, though not so correct as her sister’s, in having the advantage of height, was more striking”.

In addition to making women taller, high heels force the back to arch, pushing the bosom forward and the buttocks rearward, thus accentuating the female form.

“Men like an exaggerated female figure,” writes fashion historian Caroline Cox. The problem is that if all women wear high heels, such advantages tend to cancel out.

Height, after all, is a relative phenomenon. It may be advantageous to be taller than others, or at least not to be several inches shorter. But when all wear shoes that make them several inches taller, the relative height distribution is unaffected, so no one appears taller than if all had worn flat heels.

If women could decide collectively what shoes to wear, all might agree to forgo high heels. But because any individual can gain advantage by wearing them, such an agreement might be hard to maintain.

Source Daily Mail

No Responses »

When designers and costumers need a little inspiration, they know where to go: Girls Love Shoes. The Lower East Side treasure trove houses thousands of vintage shoes, some from as far back as the 1800s, serving as a historical archive of footwear, a resource for industry insiders, and a great online boutique for aficionados.

Sisters Zia and Dana Ziprin learned the vintage ropes from their mother, a model and stylist who opened her own vintage store in California in the sixties. When Dana began sourcing shoes in California, it didn’t take long before they amassed 2,000 pairs (imagine that shoe rack!) and opened the rental service. Now Zia, a former fashion designer, runs the new boutique as she prepares to launch her own shoe line this August. We pulled her aside to find out what pair of shoes she’d never part with and why a $700 pair of shoes is actually worth it.

What was the first designer shoe you bought?

Charles Jourdan, when I was 16. I actually have shoes from when I was 14 in my archives. I have cork six-inch platforms that I wore. I’ve been dressing up since I can remember! I used to steal my mom’s high heels and wear them out and put them in my bag when I was leaving. Before I was allowed to.

Is the $700 pair of shoes worth it?

Because I’m a shoe designer, I know the amount of work and the costs — I just finished making my first collection and I stood there and watched every shoe being made in the factory. Each shoe is completely made by hand. One shoe literally takes eight hours of a person’s time, from cutting the patterns to gluing everything. For well-made, expensive shoes, I think it makes perfect sense, so to me — it’s art.

Do you always wear heels?

Not always, but yeah, in general I do. Depending on the weather. Right now I’m suffering because I’m living in my boots.

What’s the best pair of shoes that you have, the pair that you would never part with?

We have an I. Miller that was on the cover of Vogue in 1952. They were custom made for the model. That’s something I would never part with. It’s just sort of a red snakeskin Mary Jane with a buckle.

There’s so much vintage out there; when you’re sifting through shoes, how do you know when you’ve got a winner? How do you identify quality and authenticity? Definitely the workmanship, the fabrication. We’ve also learned about shoes that are collectibles that most people wouldn’t know about, because we talk to designers who know who worked for the most companies.

We’re interviewing you as a trendsetter, so we have to ask:

What trends do you adore?

Floral appliqués and pastels. I think platforms are still going to be in. I’m doing wedges for my own line.

What look can you not stand seeing on the street?

I think those rubber things are really atrocious — Crocs. But I heard that they’re recycled, so if they’re good for the environment…

What’s flying off the shelves right now?

Right now we’re selling flat slouchy boots more than anything else. Other than those, there’s not one particular style that sells more than others — except, you know, sexy pumps.

What’s going to be big for spring?

Now shoes are really getting a lot of attention — more than ever in many, many years. Designers are getting very creative with shoes, so a lot of decorations — decorated flats, decorated wedges, embellishments like flowers and architectural shapes. The shoes are the showpiece of the outfit right now.

Who’s your favorite designer?

My favorite designer is Martin Margiela. I love Christian Dior; again, his clothes are extreme. They represent such extreme style and you might not be able to wear them every day, but the quality and workmanship is amazing. Also, Alexander McQueen.

And who do you actually wear the most?

Vintage, and I wear my own pieces.

Where do you shop?

Marmalade on Ludlow, and Leelush, which is right next door to our store. Also Alice Roi, Project 8, Seven boutique and Edon Manor — it’s a shoe shop in Tribeca. And Maria Luisa in Paris.

What can’t you live without?

At the moment it’s probably my bag, which I wear all the time. I have it in five colors. Black, brown, beige, white, and gray. They’re by Patricia Lukosezk.

Source New York Magazine

No Responses »

THIS spring, nearly every top designer has a ” Cinderella” slipper, a shoe priced so high that it should come with a handsome prince — or an hour with a male escort, at least. Christian Louboutin’s webbed suede and button sandals sell for $1,345, while Versace offers a $1,400 satin pump festooned with nothing more than a few tassels. Dior’s platform slingback with beaded heel runs $1,030, while Balenciaga’s pink and brown braided gladiator sandal goes for $1,375.

Then, there’s the $1,045 Lanvin flat (that should land at Barneys in Beverly Hills any day now. Already, women are salivating for this sandal adorned with a couple dozen leather-covered studs. Run, don’t walk. There’s a waiting list.

“Footwear is having its runway moment,” says Marshal Cohen, chief analyst for New York market research firm NPD Group. Designers are “raising the cachet of the brand by having one extravagant style, and that one makes the other pairs seem more reasonable.”

In other words, the glass slipper has shattered and consumers have resigned themselves to splurging. Case in point: You pick up a sandal and sigh with relief when it costs less than your monthly car payment. And those sale endorphins surge when you see $1,000 platforms marked down to $675.

Pièce de résistance styles aside, the going price for a luxury designer pump has climbed from $350 in 2004 to $500 in the last year. Mary Janes, an “it” style for spring, range in price this season from $575 for a sleek patent leather pair by Gucci to $690 for suede ones with zaftig curves by Prada.

Miuccia Prada recently was quoted as saying, “The obsession with handbags has finished for now. It feels over. It’s about shoes.”

Celebrities such as Kirsten Dunst pout for Miu Miu ads that highlight accessories, and starlets name-check their mules on the red carpet. Christian Louboutin’s iconic crimson undersoles — as eye-catching as fresh spilled blood on asphalt — have become status symbols. Every new season brings a new style, and with the reign of jeans and casualwear, a breathtaking shoe separates the chic from the chaff.

That’s not exactly good news for shoe junkies. A pair of sandals could set you back as much as a shoulder bag. Right now, a turquoise Prada satchel sells for $535 on the Neiman Marcus website, and the designer’s wavy ankle-wrap sandal sells for $550.

“I will literally think, ‘Do I spend $600 on shoes or get new plumbing?’ ” says Carlota Espinosa, vice president of online sample sale retailer HauteLook.com. “They keep raising prices to see if people will pay more. And there’s no law that says they can’t.”

Nor is there any way to justify the steady and exponential boost in price. Cohen traces the trend back to 2002, when everyone was crying foul over $300 jeans. “Denim stole all the attention, so no one noticed that footwear prices were quietly rising,” he says. “The retailers saw that women were passionate about shoes and looked at footwear as an investment.”

SUNSET PLAZA boutique owner Tracey Ross felt the sting about five years ago. “When Chloé came on the scene, I remember noticing it,” she recalls. “All of a sudden, every line started designing a shoe collection that was more elaborate and more expensive.” That’s about the time that Lanvin entered the scene.

Simultaneously, the dollar started to atrophy, which drove prices up even more. Because the best shoes are made in Italy, U.S. retailers take a bath when buying and importing European footwear.

“Right now, everything from the price of leather to factory costs are about 20% more because of the euro,” says Neil Weilheimer, executive editor of Footwear News. “The prices have been creeping up, but we’re seeing the most dramatic increases because of it now.”

The dollar is at a five-year low against the euro, but a euro on steroids isn’t solely to blame. Thanks to “Sex and the City” character Carrie Bradshaw — the patron saint of footwear fanatics — shoe designers have become demigods. Even bachelors in Duluth, Minn., know the name “Manolo” and certain people can probably pronounce “Christian Louboutin” more easily than ” Albert Camus.”

Some blame Louboutin for spiking prices. Even his sequined ballet flats sell for $880.

“He started the trend when he introduced the platform,” says John Rutenberg, who recently retired from Barneys in Beverly Hills after 15 years as a shoe sales associate. “He wanted to pull ahead of Manolo Blahnik, and his platform sold for $395 in 2004. Now, it costs $730.”

Louboutin — who fetches up to $2,700 for a pair of crystal-studded pumps — refuses to take the blame for footwear inflation.

“This is not in the hands of the designers,” he says from Paris. “It’s the retailers. If Neiman’s or Barneys decide that people are used to spending $700 on a pair of pumps, why would they lower that price?”

Great question. Not surprisingly, spokespeople for Neiman Marcus and Barneys declined to comment on the great shoe price debate. But Rutenberg says Barneys shoppers aren’t flinching at the prices. “Danielle Steel spends $4 [million] to $5 million a year at Barneys on shoes for herself and her children,” he says, adding that the Beverly Hills store “sells $22 million in footwear per year.”

Evelyn Ungvari, owner of the boutique Diavolina on Robertson Boulevard, says that she would gladly drop the prices on her shoe selection if the dollar rallies back to health.

“I feel horrible when my girls come in here and say, ‘I can’t spend this much on sandals,’ ” she says, seated amid $775 Pierre Hardy peep-toe pumps and $595 Gil Carvalho gold sandals that zip up the back. “They think it’s my fault, but I am paying these high prices too.”

Ungvari has smartly stocked her shop with a variety of styles to suit every budget. Gladiator sandals by Dolce Vita priced at $124 are just a few strides away from Givenchy’s $395 patent leather version.

Other small shoe purveyors are seeking out alternative suppliers to stay afloat. “A boot we had last season for $495 would have to sell for $695 this fall and so we’re not carrying them,” says Beth Whiffen, owner of boutique Il Primo Passo in Santa Monica. She’s looking to Spain, rather than Italy, for more reasonable lines. “Our customers spend up to $495 without any price resistance. That’s the breaking point.”

Still, retailers — be they sleek behemoths or quaint boutiques — mark up shoes 2.4 to three times the wholesale price. (On clothes and bags, the average markup is generally twice the wholesale price.) A pair of shoes that wholesale for $200 to $250 retail for $600. Exotic skins such as python, eel and stingray ratchet up costs even more. The same goes for ornate accents such as the mirrored heels on those ballyhooed Balenciaga sandals or the sculpted flower stem heel on Prada’s latest pumps.

But like the real estate market, the shoe market could be in for a correction. NPD Group reports that in 2005, footwear sales were up 11%. That figure dipped to 5% in 2006 and wilted to 2.5 % last year. Now, with a recession looming, the industry can expect some scuffs.

In the meantime, don’t fault Lanvin or the retailers for your financial blisters. “This is a free market,” says Milton Pedraza, chief executive of the Luxury Institute, a retail research firm in New York. “The consumers are to blame for paying these prices.”

Who’s up for a revolution? Wear comfortable shoes.

Source LA Times

No Responses »

Feast your eyes on these shoes: they are the shape of things to come. Louis Vuitton’s footwear statement for autumn is a clodhopping court, balanced on a 17cm heel. Yes, you read that right – 17cm (7in to you old-school types).

There is already a waiting list, and when they hit the shops later this year, they will be the highest heels in fashiondom, pipping the current title-holder, a pair of 16cm black ponyskin shoes by Christian Louboutin, created for the designer Roland Mouret. Add to this the spooky 14cm heelless boots that Antonio Berardi introduced for spring/summer 2008 and the 14cm Terminator sandals by the cult cobbler Alejandro Ingelmo – which have all but sold out in Harvey Nichols (customers are also clamouring for his equally fearsome Thriller sandals) – and a clear picture emerges. Shoes are getting taller and wilder.

“The hardest thing to sell at the moment is a black kitten heel,” says Rebecca Farrar-Hockley, the buying and creative director of Kurt Geiger. According to her, a shoe boom is nigh, spurred on by It-bag fatigue and pared-down ready-to-wear. “Women who want to look edgy are doing it with their shoes,” she says. For retailers, it is a bonanza. Farrar-Hockley expects the £4.6 billion UK shoe market to grow by at least 10% in the next five years. “The profit margin on shoes and bags is comparable, yet people buy three times as many shoes as they do bags,” she continues.

Increasingly, they are investing in hot-off-the-catwalk styles, and the more outrageous, the better. These extreme heels are the last refuge of the fashion snob. The high street simply cannot replicate such daring designs. As one label queen says: “Anybody can carry a bag – look what happened to the Balenciaga Lariat. But not everyone can pull off Balenciaga knee-high gladiator boots.” Indeed, impossible shoes are a badge of pride in fashion circles. “I haven’t bought a pair of shoes I can walk in for about two years,” confesses one fashion buyer. She doesn’t seem to mind, and has adjusted her lifestyle to suit. As well as having a serious taxi addiction, she habitually carries two pairs of shoes: heels for on duty and flats for walking to the bus. It’s no coincidence that Sebastian Manes, accessories honcho at Selfridges, reports selling as many flat pumps as he does outrageous heels.

Wear a sensible heel and the fash pack will, literally, look down on you. I narrowly avoided shoe shade when I picked up a pair of YSL Tribute sandals at the more commercial heel height of 11cm, as opposed to the 16cm catwalk version. “Claudia, you’re not going to wear them, are you? Those are selling heels,” said my designer-clad friend, not bothering to hide her disgust. For all you fashion civilians, a “selling” heel is a toned-down (lower) version of what appears on the catwalk.

“It’s gone over the top, and it’s about time people came back to reality,” says Manolo Blahnik, who won’t go higher than 11.5cm. He’s right, of course. Reality will return, and kitten heels, too. But for now, the shoe-buying experience is a numbers game, with the key figures being how high and how much.

Source TimesOnline

No Responses »

BECAUSE everyone is talking so openly about sex these days, there should be no shame, in these pages, in discussing a few pairs of shoes.

A Louboutin design inspired by a photograph of Princess Diana.

“Shoes are such little sex objects,” Valerie Steele, the director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, was saying as she pointed out the erotic attributes of an open-toe sandal, how it revealed a little crack of pinky cleavage, or a feathery Folies-Bergère pump with a peekaboo heel that she described in unprintable language. Grrr.

The shoes were by Christian Louboutin, the French designer whose styles are often recognizable by a signature design element, the carnal red sole. His work is, for the first time, the subject of a museum exhibition, which was curated by the graduate students of the fashion and textile studies program at F.I.T.

Since it opened last week, the show has drawn a surprising amount of interest, perhaps because it is in a small, dark hallway behind the museum’s main galleries, kind of like a back room for foot fetishists.

“Oooh, I want those sandals,” a young woman said.

“Hey, he has a store on Madison Avenue,” a middle-aged father said. “We should check that out.”

Mr. Louboutin’s shoes seem inherently to cast a burlesque tone upon their audience. There are examples, under a heading of “Fetish,” that suggest a prurient love of patent leather and metal studs, and further along the corridor one will find a pair of shiny black shoes with metal heels so tall that only the tippy toe touches the ground.

Much is made of the red soles, as the exhibition notes that Mr. Louboutin may have been responding to the color of Andy Warhol’s poppy prints, an assistant’s red nail polish or the historical association of red heels with the aristocracy (as illustrated with a photograph of a Louis XIV portrait). Mostly, it was the glamour and eroticism associated with the color.

Still, one pair of shoes could be described as sweet: black suede flats from 1991 with the word LOVE in appliqué. They were inspired by a photograph of Princess Diana looking forlornly at her feet. Mr. Louboutin thought that if she had been looking at those shoes, she would have been smiling.

Source NY Times

No Responses »

Even those who haven’t heard of Christian Louboutin have seen his shoes.

They’re marked by his trademark red sole, the result of a lucky experiment with a Mary Jane and a bottle of nail polish many years ago.

Now he’s the world-renowned designer of haute heels favored by the rich and famous. Cate Blanchett, a die-hard fan, donned a pair of Louboutin’s 4-inch silver stilettos for this year’s Oscars, despite being pregnant. Oprah so adores her Louboutins that she wore a flawlessly unscuffed pair during a recent interview with “freegans,” people who refuse to pay for anything, let alone an $800 pair of heels.

“Owning his shoes is just a wonderful wink for a woman,” says Louboutin’s friend and frequent collaborator, designer Diane von Furstenberg. “It’s just a very fun thing for a woman to do.”

On Monday, the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology opens “Sole Desire,” an exhibition of the designer’s work with pairs of shoes culled from the school’s collection and from Louboutin’s own archive.

But just because he has become, literally, a museum piece, don’t think that Louboutin’s characteristic mix of sex, style and humor is about to be shelved.

“In designing shoes for myself,” he says on the phone from Paris, “I’m not thinking of a specific person or catwalk. I’m just not thinking of clothes at all. I’m always thinking of a naked woman, actually.”

Naked women, as it happens, were one of the designer’s first inspirations. In interviews, he’s described his formative years with a mixture of vice and high society that could be Dickensian if it wasn’t so utterly French.

Born in 1963, he was barely tall enough to see over the bar counter when he began roaming the storied nightlife of 1970s Paris and ogling the dancers in cabarets. “His passion for dancing and showgirls increasingly disrupted his schoolwork,” reads one passage from his online bio.

He freelanced for design houses as famous as Chanel and Yves Saint-Laurent before netting a gig with footwear specialist Roger Vivier in 1988. Vivier was some 40 years his senior, and working with the master taught Louboutin, as Louboutin would later say, that “shoe design was a real métier” — in other words, his dream job.

His fascination with the stiletto ­started early. Fashion legend dictates that as a teenager, Louboutin was strolling through Paris when he noticed a sign prohibiting high heels in the Museum of Oceanic Art, lest they scratch the floors.

In 1992, he opened his first boutique in Paris and filled it with heels so dangerously pointy they verged on scandalous.

Source NY Daily News

No Responses »

Designer Sergio Rossi is famous among the well heeled for his hand-made custom-fit shoes at eye popping prices take a peek into how those beautiful shoes get made

No Responses »

Starlets, socialites and fashionistas can’t get enough of the elegant shoes by Christian Louboutin. The haute heel designer known for his “paint-the-town-red” signature soles made a recent appearance at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills at a star-studded event full of fans like Ashley Olsen, Kristen Bell and Hayden Panettiere. See his inspiration for the Spring collection

One Response »

No Responses »

‘You want to be more simple in fashion now, and more minimal,’ announced Miuccia Prada after her latest catwalk show last month. And with these words a million imitations will be launched of her slightly disconcerting version of simplicity (vast quantities of semi-transparent lace).

Source Telegraph

But what will be harder to copy - and even harder to make sense of - are the new-season Prada patent shoes, embellished with frills and ruffles. They are, I suppose, rather more minimal than her previous collection (the ones in the shops now), which are the most extraordinarily surreal of designs: carved clumpy heels in a rainbow of yellow, purple, pink, orange and red, a bit like early 1970s Ossie Clark or Biba, but even weirder, as if conceived to wear to a druggy fairyland.

All of which might sound absurd, but I actually love the look of these shoes - not that I could afford them, at over £400 a pair, and there will be little chance of finding a cheaper, high-street alternative, because they’re as close as footwear gets to surrealism, and therefore too idiosyncratic to replicate. This is, presumably, a message that Prada is keen to emphasise - that high-concept fashion raises itself above the reach of downmarket copycats. And the more surreal the heel, the harder it is to duplicate.

Equally important is the fact that there is even greater profit to be made in shoes (along with handbags) than in designer clothing. So you need a show-stopping shoe in every collection - a shoe that shrieks, ‘Buy me! Love me! Need me!’

Hence the gladiator boots and warrior-queen shoes at Balenciaga and Givenchy (suitable for kick-ass career women); the trompe l’oeil candlestick heels at Miu Miu; the towering, multicoloured wedges at Valentino and Gucci; and Marc Jacobs’ reinvented heels, spun round and attached to the soles, apparently defying the laws of gravity.

What, exactly, is the point, you might well ask? You probably won’t be able to walk very far in these shoes, and you certainly can’t run in them; so what is one meant to do with them? Put them on a mantelpiece, like a quirky sculpture? This is always an option - a perverse one, I grant you - but I have a theory, borne out by years of personal practice, that if you love a pair of beautiful shoes, however fantastical, you are miraculously able to dance in them. Thus the right heels - and you know them when you find them - will lift the spirits as well as the feet.

No Responses »