INSA, a UK artist, has created some of the most bizarre shoes we’ve ever seen, as part of a new exhibit at the Tate Modern – a collection of responses to Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary. What was controvertial about Ofili’s piece – that the Virgin Mary was made from elephant dung – is also what makes INSA’s shoes mentionable…they too are partly made of elephant dung.

I’d like to think the shoes are meant to represent something; perhaps the way in which the Western world’s fashionable culture requires people to put themselves at a distance from the poverty third world before splashing out thousands on clothes and shoes. I’d like to think the thick layers of dung that make up the bottoms of the shoes are representational of us walking all over the third world, having to use ever-greater heels to balance ourselves against the size of our oppression – although we look quite good, our ’soles’ are essentially crap.

Sadly, however, I think it’s probably just attention seeking nonsense, like most of what I see in the Tate Modern. Make it first, define it later – the poser’s guide to art. A press release claims INSA “sourced dung from the same family of elephants that produced the dung used in Chris’s infamous paintings” – as if that makes any difference whatsoever.

A 59-year old man has been caught by Korean police, after stealing over 600 pairs of designer shoes to stock his second-hand shoe shop! Although normally I wouldn’t bother writing a post about a shoe thief, this man used a pretty interesting method to pinch the footwear.

The man managed to steal huge numbers of very expensive shoes by visiting hospitals and funeral homes and posing as a mouner. To clarify the technique, allow me to tell you what the police caught him doing.

The man arrived at a funeral home in the Suseo district of south Seoul, dressed all in black – like a mourner. Before he went inside, he removed his shoes – a respectful tradition in Korea – and left them outside with all the other mourners’ shoes. After a fleeting visit inside to ‘pay his respects’, the man left the funeral home, slipping on a highly expensive pair of designer shoes as he did so! Sounds to me like he’d been watching too much Slumdog Millionare!

According to the Korean police, they caught him stealing three pairs for shoes, with a combined value of nearly £1200! To be perfectly house, that sounds dubious; that’s an average value of £400 per pair of men’s shoes… Either way, the police traced him to a warehouse where he kept over 1200 shoes (that number again) to supply his second-hand shoe shop. The shoes are now all on display in Seoul, in the hope that the owners can reclaim them… If that sounds too stupid to be true, check out this picture:

Looks like it’s a good day to be a shoe-thief in Seoul!

Happy New Year! After the popularity of the last post about crazy designer shoes, we’ve decided to bring you a second instalment – possibly even weirder than the first one! Hold onto your plimsolls, this is gonna get strange…

To start things off, a pair of shoes from probably the laziest designer in the world. These are what most people refer to…as feet. They look very much as if the designer simply couldn’t be bothered to finish making them – or even start for that matter! Perhaps I’m being unfair; maybe they were forgotten about until 25 minutes before show time, or the designer ran out of money and couldn’t afford the materials… Whatever the reason for their being, these are not good shoes.

In stark contrast to the first shoes, these are probably the most over-planned shoes in existence. In case you can’t see for yourself, they have a CD player built into the sole of the shoe… I don’t actually know whether it works or not, but I fear it may just be a fashion statement similar to wearing headphones attached to nothing around your neck. I’m not saying these are bad shoes, but they are pretty strange.

Finally, check out these pinnacles of bizarre – shoes that I refer to in my mind as “The Raptors”! With a heel that would break the ankle of the most bendy of ballerinas, these shoes are also equipped with talon-like claws or spikes that sit in the bridge of the foot, presumably to ensure one does not alter one’s frankly ridiculous pose.

Whatever next?! (This is deceptive because I already know what’s next and it’s mental).

Today we bring you a few of our favourites from our collection of strange designer shoes; the ones that made us go “Oooo…oh right”, “Is that…?” and sometimes “They can’t be real!”. It may sound like a terrible speed date, but we assure you these are real reactions to these strange shoes.

Firstly, these bizarre red numbers, apparently designed for the 0.02% of the population that could possibly ever stand up in these, let alone walk around. Aesthetics aside, I think the fundamental laws of physics, combined with simple facts about human anatomy, make these shoes somewhat redundant for anything other than brief posing sessions. It’s just a shame there aren’t many photo-shoots with “Idiocy” as their theme, otherwise these would be hot-sellers! Anyway, let’s move on; behold, our second offering:

What do you mean “that’s not a shoe”? How dare you! Can’t you see it’s…um… No, the Shoe Blog is stumped. As a piece of art, this offering really challenges the very notion of ’shoe’, forcing us to question exactly what it is to be a shoe and, hence, what it is to be a human. As a shoe, however, it sucks.

Finally these – Boxing Shoes! The latest in foot protection for those of our practising street capoeira…or the oddest shoes many of us have ever laid eyes on.

No doubt we’ll be back with more in the near future, so check back soon!