Shell games

When it comes to shoe shopping, I am a romantic. I fall in love first and do background checks later. This means I have a bad habit of investing in fab footwear in the heat of the moment, only to remember – too late – that there are already half a dozen similar items back in the shoe closet. So nowadays when hitting the sales I carry a mental checklist of shoe styles to steer clear of. These include:

• leopard/zebra/dalmatian/tiger prints. All too easy to overindulge, especially in the last few seasons when they’ve been all over the high street like a scene from The Beasts Are On The Streets. With animal print a little goes a long way (especially if it’s blue*);
• python and ostrich. Fake python or ostrich skin never looks as good as, say, mock-croc, while the real thing is a bit queasy-making unless done in moderation;
• anything yellow. My wardrobe already contains far more lemon/canary/primrose than any sensible Celtic-complexioned person ought to have.

The corollary, of course, is the list of Shoe Types One Can Never have Too Many Of. For instance:

• anything red, especially anything red and pointy;
• anything gold;
• anything tortoiseshell.

Tortoiseshell is rarely a problem because, generally speaking, there’s not that much of it about. This stunning pair of tortoiseshell patent “Fever” stilettos by Stuart Weitzman is a perennial classic (also available in other colours and finishes.) The tortoiseshell version featured in the September 2011 issue of US Harper’s Bazaar, which made me do a double-take as I’ve had mine for years.

Sad to say, even thgough I adore my “Fever”s they are the most uncomfortable shoes I own, bar none. They are so spectacularly narrow and high that putting them on is like squeezing your toes into a nutcracker. (Their popularity makes one wonder if the practice of foot-binding is more widespread than one might have imagined.)

Happily, there are no comfort issues with my latest acquisitions. Jonathan Kelsey has designed some of the most gorgeous tortoiseshell shoes of recent seasons, and, better still, he has collaborated with the UK department store Debenhams to make a super-affordable line. These shoe-boots (below) have 4-inch (10cm) heels, gold soles, and mushroom suede uppers. Patent tortoiseshell wraps around from toe to heel. They look good, and they feel great.

*Below, blue zebra-print heels by Balenciaga, as blogged by Anna Dello Russo in November 2011. Click here to see blue zebra-print heels blogged by me in July 2010.

(Cross) country life

“I have a pair of shoes for you,” said my friend Konstantin. “I found them at the dacha during the summer.” 

Kostya, like most of my friends, knows I have a wee bit of an obsessionette with footwear, so I was very excited to see what he’d unearthed. But I must confess I was puzzled by these. They’re beautifully made black leather lace-ups, in great condition. At the toe, the sole is composed of four layers of leather, stitched as well as glued, and longer than the shoe itself by about a centimeter. 

Inside, they are hand-lined with leather insoles, again stitched and glued. The outer soles (leather) are nailed on, with various little stamps from an awl. They are marked size “41” and “3” and there is no brand, so they are hand-made (and/or state-issue.) 

What most mystified me was their heels, which are triangular, and attached with a dozen nails. 

Of course, any Russian – and probably any winter sports enthusiast – will have instantly identified these: they are cross-country ski boots. The extended sole in front is for slotting into a ski, and if I understand the principle correctly the triangular heel allows for easier level and uphill travel. And the leather soles would be for smooth schussing across the snowy plains. I think.

Whatever. The temperature today is -16°C, with a wind chill of -20° and plenty of light, powdery snow. Perfect conditions for testing a pair of vintage ski boots, so your Shoeblogger laces them on and steps confidently onto the balcony. (You didn’t think I’d actually try cross-country skiing, did you?)

The boots feel quite comfortable, and while my fingers and camera rapidly start to freeze up, my tootsies are quite happy. Only problem is when I actually try to take a few steps in them and realise that smooth leather soles and an icy balcony eight floors up are a sure route to disaster. I skid around for a few minutes (hardly panicking at all) and then retreat back indoors. Whew. Great shoes, but I don’t think I’ll be swopping my lug-soled Canadian snow boots for them just the same.

Black velvet (if you please)

If there is one thing nicer than a long lunch with an old friend, it is a long lunch with an old friend combined with some serious shoe shopping. Last time Sadia and I had done any proper shopping together was in Berlin, where she totally failed to stop me maxing my credit card on a pair of Armani pony skin mules (read all about it here). That was ages ago. This time round we were having lunch at
Le Gavroche, which has a three-month waiting list. Sadia, being an exceptionally organised gal, had booked our table even before I’d booked my flight to London for Christmas. Lunch was worth the three-month wait. They pretty much had to kick us out late afternoon.With our waistlines expanded and our wallets shrunk we meandered up to the Selfridges Shoe Galleries.

Now, I have to say that I don’t think the sales in London this month were all that. So far, the best thing I’d scored was a bath mat (it’s a great bath mat, but still). So I wasn’t holding out major hopes as we trailed around tables groaning under the weight of unwanted Kurt Geiger purple suede wedge sandals and un-discounted Christian Louboutin everything. Until – that moment. When I spotted – them.

All shoe lovers know that moment, when you first catch sight of Them across a loud department store or hushed boutique. The moment when your gaze falls on a pair of shoes that call your name, that say, “You’re the one that I’ve been waiting for. Take me. Now.”

My latest crush is a pair of Alexander Wang “Hannah” black velvet loafer boots.  They have a 6-inch heel and a stretch-velvet “shaft” (I’m not making it up – that’s what it says on the website). They look like something a particularly cool 1970s babysitter would wear. They cost six hundred and fif – whoa! Even Sadia couldn’t make me spend that much in the sales. These were reduced. Way reduced. Cheaper than lunch at Le Gavroche. And very, very tasty.

First Footing 2012

According to Scottish tradition (and Wikipedia) the first person to cross the threshold of a home on New Year’s Day – the “first foot” – is a bringer of good fortune for the coming year. “The first foot is traditionally a tall, dark-haired male; a female or fair-haired male are in some places regarded as unlucky” (apparently this is a throwback to the Viking days when blond strangers arriving on your doorstep meant trouble.) ShoeClub’s first footing of 2012 comes courtesy of German-born (and dark-haired) designer Burak Uyan and his tall, elegant, silver strappy sandals (below). 

A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Vienna, Uyan began his career in Paris, at Givenchy and Giambattista Valli. His own line was launched for spring 2011. As Holli Rogers, buying director at Net-a-Porter, put it (in an interview in WWD), “Uyan’s designs have an architectural sensibility with the perfect balance of elegance and modernity.” They therefore encapsulate one of the biggest trends of the new season: Art Deco.

Image thanks to Panoramio.com

Linear, symmetrical, architectural, graphic – spring/summer 2012 is all about taking your style cues from the Chrysler Building (above). 

These white leather ankle boots from Chanel (above), with their little bulb-shaped heels and zig-zag patent applique (Aztec patterns are a key ref in Art Deco), could almost have stepped out of the pages of Vogue’s July 1928 number, and Hoyningen-Huené’s image of two bathers sharing a cigarette (below).

Image thanks to ana-lee.livejournal

Back to Wikipedia: “Although many design movements have political or philosophical beginnings or intentions, Art Deco was purely decorative.” 

Art Deco 2012, on the other hand, is positively groaning with intellectual references. For instance, the inspiration for Fendi’s collection (below) was Rita Levi-Montalcini, an Italian neurologist born in 1909 and winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1986.      

According to Tim Blanks on Style.com, “Silvia Venturini Fendi felt she [RLM] was the perfect embodiment of the very particular type of Milanese woman she [SVF] wanted to celebrate with the new Fendi collection: serious, practical, possibly academic.” 

Which is also a pretty good description of Eileen Gray (below), the Irish modernist designer and architect born in 1878. 

Images thanks to thebluelantern and thedesignmuseum

Gray’s “E-1027” house, built on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin (and designed to share with her lover, Jean Badovici, the editor of L’Architecture Vivante, fact fanatics) is a landmark piece of modernist architecture. It would also make the perfect setting for showing off those gorgeous gold-soled Fendi mules, perhaps whilst channelling exiled Russian princess Natalia Paley in this Lucien Lelong dress (below, shot for for Vogue in 1931, by Hoyningen-Huené again) and sipping a Sidecar (Cointreau, lemon juice, cognac.)

Image thanks to billyjane.tumblr.com

On that note, I wish you “Tchin Tchin,” as Princess Natalia would doubtless have said, and a very Happy “Sh-n-oe” Year!