Designer Shoes

Archive for the ‘Information’ Category

When 1000 women were questioned about their feelings towards their footwear, it transpired that over 92% of them could remember the first pair of shoes they ever bought with their own money. As incredible as this fact is on its own, it’s even more shocking when compared to the fact that only 60% of them could remember the name of the first person they ever kissed!

Would it be insane to draw the conclusion that, for these 1000 women, designer shoes (or maybe fashion) is actually more important than love life? Of course it would be. However, equally interesting as this memory test is the fact that, while only 15% of these women admitted to feeling sorry at dumping a boyfriend, a massive 96% of them said they regretting having to throw away a pair of shoes! So, while it may be hard to draw conclusions from such a bizarre array of evidence, there can now be little doubt as to the importance of shoes to many women. It’s not just something they do to frustrate men; they really do love shoes – perhaps more than they love other people.

As celebrity status becomes easier to attain than a bus pass, more and more designers seem less interested in making good shoes and more interested in getting free entry to the biggest fashion events on the planet. What’s more, the link between comfortable shoes and fashionable shoes seems more stretched than ever and, as Victoria Beckham found out recently, the results can be catastrophic!

However, luckily for those of us who don’t particularly enjoy suffering to look good, there are still designers who have their feet on the ground. In 2005, former ballroom dancer and engineer Anyi Lu combined her knowledge and eye for style to create shoes for “confident and independent ladies of discrete luxury”. Unlike many fashion shoe designers, Lu’s focus isn’t on taking style to the limits at the expense of comfort; her shoes have comfortable rounded toes and her range included flat and pumps, as well as “sensible heels”.

Having said that, Lu is a creative mind and seizes to the opportunity to “express [her]self anew” with every season that passes. Her line of designer shoes has been successful in America so far, so hopefully we’ll be seeing more of Anyi before long!

Jimmy Choo shoes normally cost hundreds of pounds, but the company is set to soon release a brand new range of designer shoes for the less-hyper-wealthy consumer. The shoes will go on sale in 19 H&M stores across the UK and will cost a more reasonable £69.99 for sandals and up to £179.99 for leather boots. I know what you’re thinking and you’re right; it’s still not cheap, but it’s Jimmy Choo – what did you expect?

President and founder of Jimmy Choo, Tamara Mellon, said she “wanted to create pieces that would reach a cool and young customer with a fashionable and independent sense of spirit.” With Christmas just around the corner, the timing might just be perfect, as people get be certain to make an impact on a loved one this Christmas day when they receive some Jimmy Choo shoes! That’s not all the Choo that H&M will be selling either; the range includes clothes, handbags and men’s shoes too. According to Mellon, “H&M is full of fun, one-off items with an accessible and glamorous identity made with stylish materials, emphasised with colour and embellishment”.

Sounds great! I’ll be there on Friday when the doors open!

The new Nike Women’s LunarGlide shoe marks a breakthrough in running ‘technology’. Apparently, when women walk, they pronate their foot more than men do (their foot rolls inwards slightly more). By including extra foam under the heel in the women’s model, as well as an archbridge to support the midsole; Nike have cleverly designed their shoe to cater for the differences between way that men and women run.

What may be even more important than these layers of foam and support, however, is what these shoes do for another key difference between men and women – confidence. What these shoes also offer women is inspiration and motivation to run; they are exceptionally light, extremely comfortable and, most importantly, they look great! Sure, designer shoes are meant to look great, but it’s not often you entirely at ease in your running shoes, is it? In fact, the black versions look smart enough that you could wear them to work!

So, if you’re looking for something to inspire you to keep in shape around Christmas time – consider investing in some of these! Alternatively, they’d make a great Christmas present to help a friend of family member lose that New Year flab-feeling.

Curved-sole shoes have always looked like a gimmick and now experts are saying that’s exactly what they are.  According to the Sketcher’s Shape-Ups campaign, their shoes help you “get in shape without going to the gym” – which is a nothing-claim from the outset.  It doesn’t matter what shoes you wear, or even whether you bother wearing shoes; if you walk ten miles every day, you’ll probably get in better shape.  Putting on some shoes is not going to make the slightest bit of difference – it’s what you do in them. 

So, what are you meant to do in them?  Well, apparently the idea is that the rocking soles make it harder to stand upright – working your muscles harder and burning more calories when you walk around.  However, as podiatrist Marlene Reid points out, “The shoes limit normal motion in the foot.  So you may be under-using some muscles and overusing others.”  Exercise physiologist Pete McCall from the American Council on Exercise adds to this, saying the effect on weight or muscle tone is likely to be negligible. 

Sketchers have refused to publish their small surveys, saying they are currently doing a larger study.  However, shouldn’t the studies have been done before they started making insane claims about the effects of their shoes?  Does it not seem that, once again, we have a major business leading the way in the distribution of totally inaccurate information?  As a personal trainer, advanced fitness instructor and strength trainer, here is my opinion: will walking around in these shoes promote weight loss, strengthen the back, tighten the abs, firm the muscles in the legs and improve circulation?  Yes, it will.  However, so will walking around in any trainers, or even barefoot; the health and fitness benefits these shoes claim are benefits of walking – they are nothing to do with these silly designer shoes.  How can the public be expected to make sensible, well-informed decisions about their health when the people they look up to and respect in the field tell them nothing but nonsense?

Life in Liverpool apparently had quite the impact on shoe designer and Surrey-girl Aruna Seth’s approach to her footwear. “The way the girls in Liverpool dress every day is amazing” she declares, sighting her time as a student of European Studies at Liverpool University as the first step on the road to fashion success. Anybody that is familiar with the designer’s work will agree with her statement that her shoes are “for for girls who like to be seen” – something she also attributes to the Liverpool attitude.

Designer Shoes

Of course, it wasn’t European Studies that got her where she is today; Aruna’s family has been in the shoe industry for four generations and, after a series of courses in footwear design in London, she too was ready to start her own label. Now in her third season, she seems to be loving her professional more than ever – admitting that she even wears her own shoes every day! “I wanted to make women’s so I could wear them myself”, she was noted as saying – which sounds fair enough to me!

Although her designer shoes are worn by the likes of Lucy Jo Hudson and Paris Hilton, Aruna says she wants “all girls to aspire to my shoes. I’ve had people running up to me on the street to comment about them because they’re just so wow and that’s what I absolutely love.” Admittedly the fashion industry is the only place you can get away with calling something “just so wow” – but luckily for Aruna, when her mouth starts walking she lets her shoes to the talking.

Another Weitzman entry into Fantasy Shoes; his Ruby Slippers were created to be worn at the 2003 Academy Awards. Literally made of 642 rubies, these super-shoes total 120 carats and are worth $1,600,000. Predating his Cinderella Slippers, these shoes are evidence of Mr. Weitzman’s fondness for taking impoverished fictional characters and creating shoes they could never have afforded in their wildest dreams. Somewhat ironically, these shoes are over twice as expensive as one of the four remaining pairs of the original Innes Shoe Co. Ruby Slippers worn in The Wizard of Oz – the last of which sold at auction for £666,000 in 2000.

When it came to it, the Ruby Slippers were never worn at the 2003 Academy Awards. Mr. Weitzman claims that he pulled them out of the show “out of respect for those fighting in Iraq.” … I’m fairly sure the people fighting in Iraq in 2003 couldn’t have cared less whether his insanely expensive designer shoes were worn at the Academy Awards or not – what with being shot at and everything. It would have been more thoughtful to send them to Bin Laden as a peace offering, or at least give them to each soldier in turn and let him wish his way home…

Today’s entry into Fantasy Shoes is designer shoes guru Stuart Weitzman’s $2,000,000 Cinderella Slippers! For anybody unfamiliar with the story of Cinderella, the relevant part is that Cinderella’s fairy godmother created some delicate glass slippers for her to wear to a ball.

Although Weitzman’s slippers aren’t made of glass, they are set with 595 platinum-set Kwiat diamonds, including one 5-carat amaretto diamond worth a million dollars. Literally. They were worn by Oscar nominee Alison Krauss, of whom Weitzman’s daughters were fans. She wore them at the 2004 Oscars, prior to which she declared that she wanted her friends and family to be able to say “She sang in tune and didn’t forget the words. And she didn’t fall off them shoes.”

Whether she sang in tune isn’t for me to say, but what is for sure is that if “them shoes” are an accurate reflection of Cinderella’s slippers, it solves the mystery behind why the prince in Cinderella decided to choose his bride based on her shoe. He must have thought she was loaded!

There are plenty of obvious reasons why I love shoes; so obvious that they need no explication. Today, however, I thought I’d explain a couple of less obvious reasons why I love shoes – consider it a deeper insight in an otherwise inexplicable passion…

Shopping for them!

Many people see shopping for shoes as a means to an end; I see it as an end in itself as well! Of course I am there to find some gorgeous new shoes for some event or another, but the actual process of shopping for the shoes is enough of a pastime on its own! Sometimes, whilst buying shoes for a party, I wonder whether I’d actually enjoy myself more if didn’t bother going to the party and spent the equivalent hours buying more shoes instead! Don’t get me wrong; shoe shopping on a time and money budget can be exceptionally stressful indeed! As a method of relaxing, however, shoe shopping takes a lot of beating…

The way they look…off!

As amazing as a classy pair of designer shoes look as you strut down the street, many people forget the joy that you can continue to take from the way your shoes look when you’re not even wearing them! Whether they be in a vertical rack, a horizontal rack, in lines on the floor or on shelves; anybody with a sizable collection of shoes has some method of storing them that probably shows off each pair in their full glory. After all, how else can you decide which pair to wear if you can’t examine them all closely first? As much as I love wearing every pair of shoes that I have (not at the same time, obviously), I also love the process of choosing which pair to wear because it gives me an opportunity to relax and bask in the beauty of every pair I own.

So there’s two unconventional reasons why I love shoes. Can you think of any more for yourself?

Having covered flats, points, boots and sandals, I decided to quiz my panel of men about what they thought a preference for trainers said about a woman’s personality. Behold the findings!

Trainers are normally heard-wearing and practical – apparently like the people that wear them, I was informed by my panel!  Often designed for comfort, durability or to fulfill a particular function (like running a marathon), the panel decided that trainers appeal to women to whom expensive fashion statements and designer shoes mean little or nothing.

“Obviously everybody needs some trainers for the gym or going on a walk and stuff, but if a woman prefers wearing trainers to other shoes it’s probably because she’s not so bothered about looking stylish…which can be a good thing!”

Apparently if a women is neither working out nor doing the gardening, she should consider wearing something more “stylish” if she wants to impress the majority of guys on my panel. However, there were a few of them that stood their ground and decided that they actually preferred women in trainers because it suggests “…a casual, relaxed personality; not obsessed with her looks”. This minority also agreed amongst themselves that women in trainers were more fun because they could do anything in trainers, where some activities are just unsuitable for boots, heels and the like.

Personally, I think it entirely depends of the kind of trainer and the rest of the woman’s style; trainers look odd with ball gowns, but good with jeans. Heels, in my opinion, work the other way round entirely; wearing heels with jeans reminds me of the women you see at 04:00 on a Saturday morning, clinging desperately to their pot-bellied husband as they totter home from Oceana.

However, the overall response was that trainers are “for women who prefer gardening and books to men”. Sorry Paula Radcliffe.