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!