Giddy stratospheres

So kitten heels are replacing vertiginous spikes are they? Not on my watch.

I love an improbable heel, the more jawdropping the better. I still moon after those Chanel gun heels, and in an attempt to move on from the McQueen/Gaga shoes that I posted about a few days ago and will never ever get to wear... I stumbled across the work of Chau Har Lee, as documented by Susie Bubble recently.



Magnifique!

The heel-less heel is a much-done thing, yet this feels fresh and jawdropping.

As some shoes look blissfully comfortable, and others make one recoil in horror about how painful they must be to hobble about in... these fill me with curiosity. I can't imagine what it feels like to wear a shoe like this!



Perhaps it is beautifully supportive.



Perhaps it would leave indents and stripes across my feet for days.



I long to find out!

A short, pictureless update

Time on my hands: none. My poor camera hasn't been out to play at all lately.

But I found a chic little navy and white Pierre Cardin handbag this weekend, hidden in the unlikely corners of a tiny second-hand stall at Offset Festival. I will photograph it shortly. I love Pierre Cardin. My favourite pair of jeans ever were Cardin, a hand-me-down from my cousin, five years older than me. I grew out of them when I was fourteen though. It is sad that my jeans ownership peaked at such an age, but perhaps it is for the best. The cult of denim is something that mystifies and depresses me a little.

Tonight I am trying on some likely very colourful Terry de Havilland heels which I am being loaned for a party tomorrow. I get first pick out of a suitcase full of vintage TdCs. This is not something that happens very often, or indeed ever. We're hosting a dizzyingly colourful, queeny party for a stylist, with a catwalk show, two very famous ladies hosting and performing, and some NYC djs playing 'bitch-house'. Our lovely bar supervisor has gamely agreed to don a vintage 70s high-cut black & gold swimsuit and gold lurex tights for the occasion [and she carries it off, too]. Me, I'm sticking to the safety of this Mango/Osman Yousefzada dress with geometric tights and the most startling rings of blue kohl I can come up with. There will be hairdressers, and they will give me Veronica Lake hair. Maybe.

It's going to be a glorious day.

Patent and silk, satin and ribbons

Four things very dear to my heart.

Unfortunately for my attempts to save in this darkest of recession-shadowed times [--Side note - is it just me that's really not gotten into the spirit of the incoming poverty panic that's sweeping the nation? Is it unpatriotic of me? Perhaps as someone in a not well-paid or secure job who is hoping to buy a house in the next 12 months, I should be hiding behind the sofa right now, but I can't shake the thought that if I just keep saving and secreting £50 notes in envelopes around my house, I'll be okay...--]

Phew! Sorry about that. Where were we?

Ah yes. My inability to keep my debit card in my pocket in the face of shiny shiny patent. I've already got a pair of nude patent shoes [and blue patent shoes... and black patent shoes...] and really didn't need these, but there was something friendly-looking about them, and when I buckled them onto my feet, my tootsies smiled and introduced themselves to the leather with surprising cheer. Plus they remind me of Chloe shoes, though I'm sure I don't know which particular style, and that makes them more appealing, being as I certainly can't afford Chloe shoes.



At this point I must apologise for the shocking photo quality. Phone photos, as my camera cable is lost in the ether, post-house-decorating. There's official photos as well so you can see what they really look like.





Until I put them on and fell in something like love, they were the fallback option for these, which are ridiculous.



I never thought I'd succumb and buy something as patently [ho ho] ridiculous as satin shoes ["Ughhh! RUIN my satin shoes, why don't you?!?!?"}, particularly a pair of open-toed monstrosities spewing forth a froth of silk ribbon at the ankles, but then, I'd never seen these.

I can't work out whether they're pretty or pretty horrific. I've got 21 days to make up my mind, but unless I invite all my friends around to my house to help me with the decision, I'll have to decide on my own, because once I touch them to outdoor concrete I'm stuck with them.



For now, though, I love them.

Also, they have patent heels and ribbon-ends and a teensy-weensy little bar of patent over the toes. It's like a textural free-for-all... patent and satin and silk, oh my!



I think I would like to try living in the eighteenth century, when I think my taste in shoes would have been highly regarded throughout the land.

Thank you, Kurt Geiger. Thank you, Carvela.

P.S. Within my own, slightly oval sphere of logic, I can justify buying two pairs of shoes at once, because I also bought a book of sheet music this week for Chopin's nocturnes, and once I learn to play them all, my soul will be repaired and I will be a worthy individual again.

The girl with the golden gun

I know many will find them ridiculous, objectionable, in poor taste, glamorising guncrime, etc. etc., but I cannot lie. I'm awfully charmed by these shoes.



Karl Lagerfeld had Laurence Decade make them for Chanel's 2009 Cruise collection. I love the surreality of them. I think Magritte would love them. The Bond afficionado in me longs for a pair. In each colour.

The awful truth

Pooh-pooh to these preposterous notions of high heels being bad for your health.

I knew it was a bad idea to buy these sandals. Yesterday I broke my little toe. It's twice its size, purple, and hurts like a Johnny Cash song. Now I walk funny.

Women! Keep your feet encased in improbable, towering patent-leather fortresses. It's just safer.

Summer dressing

I detest flip-flops. What an unimaginative and thoroughly uncomfortable breed of footwear they are. Almost no-one can look dignified in them, and how they stay on one's feet I'll never know. Even the sound they make is abhorrent. I saw a man on the tube in them this week, with loose shorts and a dark, very heavy wool jumper - what an odd combination. Insult was added to injury when, sitting two seats away from me, he took his flipflops off and curled his bare [and not so fragrant] feet up on the seat next to me, and fiddled with them for the duration of the journey. I was not impressed.

Still, I have now come dangerously close to owning something resembling the hated item myself. For a few weeks now I've been on the prowl for some patent red gladiator sandals - no variation on this would do. It's rare I buy something purely to match one item in my wardrobe, but this was a necessity.



They were £20 from Aldo, which is about as reasonable as I think I am likely to find without venturing into Primark. I'd have preferred something more heavily styled, and in nicer, more tomatoey patent than this, but whaddayagonnado? After wearing them around the house a bit, I think better of them than I did initially. And they strap around the ankles, so are very much not flipflops. My integrity is saved.

I shall wear them thusly:



I bought this grey silk ankle-length Jigsaw dress secondhand at least two years ago, and have never worn it, lacking the right footwear. It will make its debut at my friend's housewarming barbecue in three weeks. Like the footwear, the bias-cut floaty dress is not my usual style - I have resolved to be sharp this summer, not boho-pretty-pretty - but it is lovely enough that I'll make an exception. The red patent sandals will keep it safely out of hippy territory, along with a narrow, chic belt and my old silver pistol necklace.

Happy feet

I got these yesterday.



They'll be a good way of wearing all the coloured and patterned tights I have, which don't go so well with closed-toe shoes [as most of mine are]. They remind me of original Biba shoes [incidentally, when are Biba going to take on board the concensus of everyone from regular shoppers to Ossie Clark/Vogue veteran Vanessa Lisle, and realise that Topshop rendered them obsolete long before they relaunched - their transition from daring, inexpensive and inventive everygirl phenomenon to exhorbitant, 70s retro-hash catwalk brand is irrelevant and far from convincing? Only good thing Biba have done since Barbara Hulanicki left is the brief revival of their makeup and nail polishes, 10 years ago or so]. Yesterday I wore them with shocking-fuschia Topshop tights. Today they're paired with red, white and black houndstooth tights from Emilio Cavallini. Their height & platform are leg-lengthening enough to make even the least flattering tights a possibility.

One look I really liked from the shows in Feb was this:


[Photo: fashionista.com]

Tights the same colour as one's shoes are fun and very flattering, and an easy, chic way to wear bright colours. I've been wearing blue tights with blue patent stilettos, and now I want more. [I particularly want more patent. I now know how addictive this stuff is.] I went in search of coloured, round-toed, ultra-high-heeled shoes yesterday, but drew a blank. Best I found were some admirable fuschia suede round-toed stilettos in Schuh but my inbetweeny sized feet scuppered my chances. Everything else was either too low, or leaning towards open toed boot styling. I'm not convinced by this whole open toed boot phenomenon. I shall keep looking though...