Nothing But Shoes

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

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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

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‘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.

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Designers name their creations after celebrities to cash in on growing demand for chic footwear

It’s goodbye to the Roxanne and the Giselle and hello to the Suri and the Amy: ‘it-shoes’ are about to replace ‘it-bags’.
The sorts of unusual designs and materials associated lately with handbags are being emulated this season in footwear, with innovative designs such as backward heels from Marc Jacobs and knee-high gladiator sandals by Chanel. It is being predicted that women will soon be investing in fewer but more expensive shoes; and there is a growing trend to name shoes after celebrities, just as Luella Bartley named her tote after the supermodel Giselle.

Italian fashion designer Giambattista Valli has made the Victoria shoe in honour of Mrs Beckham; Calvin Klein’s Suri shares a name with Tom Cruise’s daughter; and the Amy shoe - a favourite of Ms Winehouse - has helped to launch Jonathan Kelsey’s label. ‘I wanted to name my shoes,’ said Kelsey, ‘and as it was my first collection I named everything with the letter A. I chose the names of girls who I wanted to wear them - and Amy wore them to death.’
Kelsey has also just shown his first shoe collection for Mulberry - a sign that the British brand synonymous with ‘it-bags’ is diversifying into shoes. ‘They’ve wanted to do shoes for a while,’ said Kelsey, ‘and they’ve picked up quickly on what’s going on within the industry. They want to do with shoes what they’ve done with bags.’

Certain ‘it-shoes’, such as the Tribute stiletto by Yves Saint Laurent, which has been worn by Gwen Stefani and Jennifer Lopez, are selling out fast. Department store Harvey Nichols reports a 15 per cent rise in shoe sales this season and a higher demand for catwalk heels - the towering shoes which models wear in the fashion shows - than ’selling’ heels, the shorter, tamer versions normally sold in stores. ‘Most of the shoes we’re selling have 140mm heels,’ says Joanna Jeffreys of Harvey Nichols. ‘Two seasons ago, 100mm seemed high. And people are buying into new names. We’ve stocked Alejandro Ingelmo’s Terminator. It’s 140mm high, it’s fierce, and we’ve only got one pair left.’

A survey by Mintel last week forecast an 18 per cent fall in handbag sales, which has been the fastest-growing accessories sector of recent years. It also predicted that, while women are going to buy 7 per cent fewer pairs of shoes annually over the next five years, more shoppers will invest in more expensive footwear.

Sophia Neophitou-Apostolou, editor-in-chief of the fashion magazine Ten and a self-confessed ’shoe pig’, is impatiently awaiting the arrival in-store of this season’s Balenciaga gladiator sandals. She says that ‘it-bags’ became too linked to particular seasons, so that for their hefty price tags they had limited use. ‘Shoes are less of an investment than a £2,000 bag that is worn by every celebrity,’ she said.

Austyn Mayfield, in-house fashion expert at website Shoetube, where women can post shoe videos and blogs, said: ‘Instead of spending so much money on a single patent tote or exotic skin clutch, a girl can take the same money and invest in several pairs of shoes.’

But for all fashion’s enthusiasm for the ‘it-shoe’, will it ever dominate like the ‘it-bag’? ‘I think it will pan out differently to the it-bag trend,’ says Kelsey. ‘Not everyone can wear a 12cm platform. As a designer, you have to offer the shoe in varying heights and formats; there’ll have to be a broader spectrum of styles. There are more things to take into consideration - all the decoration will have to be different. The challenge is going to be finding the right balance.’

A quick survey of Friday afternoon shoppers in Selfridges in London’s Oxford Street found that the public is yet to be convinced. One shopper admiring a Marc Jacobs Serafima bag said: ‘I used to buy good shoes; now I buy good bags. They make me feel more confident.’

A woman browsing in the shoe department admitted that the new season shoes ‘are very pretty, but if I had to make a choice I’d spend money on a bag’. Another, who was inspecting this season’s Prada collection, also said she opted for bags over shoes. She’s not tempted by the ‘it-shoes’? ‘Not with my calves, dear.’

Source Guardian

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Renee Zellweger’s Christian Louboutins at the Oscars 08, originally uploaded by ShoeLaLa.

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jimmy choo, originally uploaded by buradori.

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