How High the Pain?If the Devil Wears Prada.....Lilith Wears Lamboutin
Seated at the breakfast table one Sunday with our noses deep into the section of the The Sunday Times appropriate to our gender, the peaceful domestic scene was shattered as my wife exploded. “God! It makes me so angry!”. Startled, I lower the books review section an inch or two and look out cautiously over my spectacles to see what’s up. She’s glaring in fury at the Style Magazine in front of her as if it had just spat at her. “What, my darling, what is it?”, says I, careful to strike the right note of interest and concern..... until I can work out what the correct reaction is. ”Look! Look at that!”, she splutters gesturing in fury at the offending article. I can see that action is called for. So I put the newspaper down, get up and walk round the table to peer over her shoulder. “See! See what I mean..... it’s criminal!”. She’s almost yelling. I look at the page spread out before her and see some pictures of fashionably dressed young women strutting across the page. I know I’ve got to be careful here, if some of this anger is not to be transferred to me. “Yeeees”, I say sagely, “I think I know what you mean”. She flashes me a quick look of knowing contempt. “No you don’t. It’s the shoes. Look at the shoes”, she commands. It’s a spread of leggy girls in mini skirts clumping about in silly shoes with 7 inch heels, most of them with those ghastly platform soles I’ve always thought hideously unbecoming and which reappear every decade or so. Losing interest and regaining my bottle I sneer, “Well, it’s fashion in’it”, as I happily return to a snuff review of yet another polemic from Noam Chomsky excoriating the US’s ongoing attempt to take over the world. My wife gives me a last withering full blast Meryl Streep basilisk stare expressing all the contempt the fashion avatar bears the barbaric rationalist hordes who have not a jot of understanding of the collective and archetypal underpinnings of the human experience as evidenced through history in the adornment of the female form, not to mention the Wealth of Nations. Actually I do understand, sort of. I find fashion interesting in many ways. I too like the sexy erotic aspects of it and where it converges with art. Hey, I’m a guy right! Give me Helmut Newton over grunge and the junkie slut look any day. The current phenomenon of “luxe en masse” for example, may be a massive contradiction but it sure works in marketing terms. And, however crass, it is interesting. I totally agree with my wife as to the stupidity of crippling women for something that’s not only nonsensical but looks ugly. But if it really does look good, it becomes a bit more arguable, doesn’t it....? Maybe ugly and stupid fashion, which also deforms, makes sense as some modern day tribal aesthetic, but somehow I don’t think that’s it. I reckon it’s about money and an essential lack of creativity. What do you do to keep the money rolling in if you’re bereft of new ideas.... but try something “shockingly” silly. And every now and again that’s exactly what fashion does. Just think of those poor Chinese women with their bound, crushed and deformed reeking feet. Fun fetish, that. Then there were all those ridiculous pomaded popinjays and their wedding cake women with wigs up to the ceiling poncing about at the court of Louis XV. You can forget the “It-Bag”, that’s dead passé, After all any fashion nag can carry a bag, but not everyone can hack 14cm heel-less shoes from Antonio Berardi. So now it’s a Shoe Boom and the cutting edge of it has 7-inch (18cm) heels costing up to $2,300 a pair from the likes of Givenchy, Balenciaga, Nina Ricci, Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Laboutin, Pierre Hardy, Alexander McQueen et al. In the UK alone they’re now spending $9 billion a year on shoes and it’s expected to grow by 10% in the next 5 years. So now, as exemplars of the trend, we have the lovely Ms Prissy Poultry reprising her role as glamour puss having done her maternal bit, tripping down the red carpet with a pelmet for a skirt in vertiginous 7-inch heels by Giuseppe Zanotti. Unsurprisingly the medical community is aghast. Here’s what foot specialist Dr Charlotte Hawkins told London’s Financial Times, when it comes to high heels., “If the heel is continually raised it shortens the calf muscle, causes bunions and corns and prolonged wear will cause degeneration of the joint function. It’s not a good idea.” So what height is OK, Doc? “One or two inches “, she says. So now you know. Fashion writer for the Sunday Times, London, Claudia Croft, got caught in her very own “Devil Wears Prada” moment. She bought a pair of “sensible” YSL Tribute sandals in the 11cm (4.5”) as opposed to the 16cm (6.5”) catwalk version, only to be looked down upon in every sense of the word by her designer friend the second she tripped into the office. “Claudia you’re not going to wear those ‘selling’ heels, are you?” , the friend sniffed, not bothering to hide her disgust. ‘Selling’ heels, as opposed to ‘catwalk’ being what the hoi polloi in the High Street get to wear. Wounded and incensed Croft went on to conduct her own survey of eleven of the best in an Agony Index. On a scale of 1 to 10 it went like this: Agony Index 3: Bearable. 11.5cm Carvelas Goldie platform, $200 by Kurt Geiger.Agony Index 3: OK on carpet. 12cm Green & white patents, $620 by Marni.Agony Index 4: Like wearing slippers.16cm Tribute sandals,$800 by YSLAgony Index 6: Take Nurofen. 11.5cm Alberta sandals, $$900 by Jimmy ChooAgony Index 6: Thrombastic. Pink suede shoes , $820 by Nicholas KirkwoodAgony Index 7: Severe. 14 cm Gold peep-toes, $1,360 by Versace.Agony Index 8: Killer. 14cm Heel-less, $2,300 by Antonio Berardi.Agony Index 8: Need Booze. 14cm perspex shoes, $340 by MinskyAgony Index 9: Hellish. 14cm black& white shoes, $1,080 by Dior Agony Index 9: Excruciating. 14cm Terminators, $1,170 by Alejandro IngelmoAgony Index 10: Crippling. 16cm Ponyskin shoes $1,040 by Christian Lamboutin British designer Nicholas Kirkwood has made a name for himself pushing the boundaries for women’s footwear ever upwards. “In 2005 I was doing 4-inch heels (10cm), now I’m doing 8-inch (20cm) slingback platforms”. He does allow that 5 inches without a platform is pushing it and told the FT that “what’s great for a show, becomes parody in real life”. Some women though don’t agree and don’t care what they look like or how much damage they do themselves, just so long as they make a statement. Such a one is 32-year old fashion stylist Grace Woodward, who told reporters that wearing 6 or 7-inch heels is, “the difference between a dachshund and an Afghan hound. Women have real respect for other women who can wear such heels”, she stated. “Wearing high heels makes a statement because its difficult, but to say it stops a women functioning is antiquated. I wear heels, I run a successful business and I get taxis whenever I need”, she concluded.
Let the last word go to the late and much lamented Kenny Everett, commenting on just such a Red Carpet moment, breathed in hushed transexual vampy tones, “and now looking absolutely and fabulously out of this world, comes Ms Cupid Stunt in........”.
