A fashion insider once told me, the clothes displayed on runways are entertainment. They don't exist. In the case of the Brooklyn Museum's spectacular history of high heels, Killer Heels, many will thank heaven: the footwear in videos and traditional museum cases looks that thrillingly treacherous. A Christian Louboutin ballet flat hoisted vertical on a stiletto for example may be a fetish item, to be worn perhaps by a prima ballerina in perpetual en pointe. True, some historic pumps from Delman's dated late 1930's look chicly dowdy, some Asian influenced styles look like artful clogs, Ferragamo's pumps for Marilyn Monroe are simply elegant, but Louboutin's "Lipspike's Bootie" or Koolhaas's "Gaga Shoe" are pure weaponry.
At Fashion Week, Vivienne Tam's show last Sunday, the models in embroidered mesh evoking bucolic settings, birds, and flowers, on eminently wearable shifts, gowns, or midriff baring ensembles looked coolly attired, even if their hair, matted down, as if dried under a bowl, was uniformly zombie. Orange is the New Black's Uzo Adubo attended, as did Baywatch's Carmen Electra. The Spring collection, delicately beautiful, hints at its porcelain influence. As Tam has attested, the inspiration was the Ming and Qing dynasties vases housed in the Forbidden Palace. And the shoes, well, many wore clunky sandals with white anklets. Yes!
A version of this post also appears on Gossip Central.