Fashion Victim: It's not so easy to put your best foot forward

Apr 10 2008 by Emma Johnson, Liverpool Daily Post

WHAT is going on in the world of shoes right now? Don’t get me wrong – like anyone with double X chromosomes, I swoon at the sight of a sexy stack heel and have more pairs than I care to count (well, actually, I know exactly how many I have, they are all boxed, numbered and arranged by occasion, but my bank manager could be reading this).

I am just a little concerned that the top designers, in their rush to out-do each other with feats (honestly no pun intended) of engineering that would put Gustav Eiffel to shame, seem to have forgotten that, unlike the goddesses they imagine parading their wares, real women actually have to walk in these things.

Let’s take as exhibit A the much-vaunted shoe of the season, Yves Saint Laurent’s Tribute, as seen on everyone from Posh Spice to Pamela Anderson.

This open-toed platform, which is available in various colours and costs from £340, comes in two different heights. Unfortunately they are high . . . and higher. The entry-level shoe, at 11cms, is just over four inches and about average for your typical stiletto, but the catwalk version with its 16cms heel equates to a whopping six inches in old money. Little wonder, then, that petite popstrel Kylie has been more than happy to tease her tootsies into a pair, but they take your woman of average height to near- Amazonian proportions, as evidenced by Alex Curran.

If that has got you reaching for the Nurofen, you won’t want anything to do with Louis Vuitton’s 17cms stiletto, which sits on what looks like a lump of golden breeze block.

But it is not just heel heights that have taken a turn for the surreal this season. Designers who aren’t trying to force women’s heads into the clouds are coming up with all sorts of wacky shoe shapes. Prada has a pair of leather and wood heels covered in bobbles, and Marc Jacobs has turned the heel sideways, while both Miu Miu and Roger Vivier have adopted the season’s floral theme, with Vivier transforming a heel into a beautiful rose stem complete with thorn.

Since I first saw that particular pair, I have found it hard to think of little else, but given their £800 price tag I am unlikely to ever find myself negotiating the cobbles of Mathew Street in them.

And therein lies the rub (or should that be blister) with these so-called extreme heels.

While it is fashion designers’ raisons d’etre to push the envelope in terms of design, these prices and heel heights probably have more to do with exclusivity than creativity.

With anyone with a credit card or a bonus to blow is now more than happy to fork out a small fortune on the season’s “It” bag, some fashion pundits have suggested that couturiers are projecting their wildest fantasies onto shoes because, while anyone can carry an expensive handbag, you need the bank balance of a Russian oligarch, a limo on tap and legs like Gisele to carry these babies off.

The rest of us, meanwhile, will just sit back and wait for the Primark version.