The shoe - Best foot forward

Tamsin Blanchard

Carlton Books Limited

2000

144 páginas

4h 48m

ISBN-10: 1842220667

Far too many times have I taken taxi rides for just a few hundred yards up to the road. Taxi drivers swear and curse; the distance have been perfectly walkable. Any relatively health person would have happily jogged without so much as breaking in a light sweat. But to walk would have been unthinkable. No, I do not have a bad case of ingrowing toenails. I simply have two close colleagues with whom I have spent many a fashion week who cannot, will not, walk any distance at all, simply because their shoes will not allow.

Fashion shows are not just an opportunity for designers to show off their collections for the season ahead; they are also the perfect place for fashion reporters, editors, buyers, and groupies to showw off their shoes. Scan the front row of any show and you will see the most extraordinary collection of footwear, by some of the grandest shoemakers around. There is American Vogue's Anna Wintour in her bare legs and Manolos, or Kate Betts of Harper's Bazaar in the shiny, gravity defying patent-leather Pradas she bought the day she arrived in Milan. A few seats along, you might see Mimi Spencer of London's Evening Standard in a pair of risqué snakeskin spike heels by Sergio Rossi. The fashion cognoscenti are obsessed with haute heels.

Heels are seductive, and no wonder. They elongate the leg and give the foot a really sexy shape. I once saw the model Carla Bruni spend a 40-minute fitting in bare feet, prettily posing on her toes for the entire duration. Just like Barbie, even without shoes, she was wearing imaginary heels.

While I can see the attraction of heels, I am a comfort queen and hate not being able to run, skip, or walk down a street. So although this book is packed with impossible shoe fantasies, and is devoted to my two shoe-obsessed, taxi bound colleagues, it also offers a few alternatives to thow who like to keep their feet a little closer to the ground.