Heels are on the rise and I'm ready to fall in love with them all over again. Literally | Jess CartnerMorley
I recently spent a week watching women fall. I hadn't planned to spend Paris fashion week this way, but that's mostly how I remember it. Show after show, the moment that came to mind, replayed over and over, was a model losing her balance and collapsing, or breaking a heel and tripping, or having to throw a pair of impossible shoes and the hold in it. hand while walking barefoot on the track.
At the Vivienne Westwood show, it was the exaggerated platforms that made the shoes impossible to put on. A platform sole is a useful trick to add height without tipping you forward at a dizzying angle. But when there's more than an inch or two of platform, your connection to the ground disappears and you lose the instinct to know which part of your foot should support your weight, for balance.
Descending from a platform, a slender model staggered on a towering shoe, swaying in gentle circles like a bowling pin. For a moment she froze, then a leg of Bambi collapsed beneath her as she hit the ground, just like Naomi Campbell did in 1993. Somehow there had more outtakes than a Laurel and Hardy movie.
Before that, I thought it was me who had forgotten how to walk in high heels. It turns out that even the professionals have a hard time. Walking in heels has nothing to do with cycling. It's much slower, to begin with. It wasn't just the lockdown that put heels out of action, but the long tail of canceled parties and, for most of us, a new rhythm that meant more time at home, less galloping. in town.
But the obituaries written last year for the high heel now seem premature. Heels are on the rise again, both in real life and on the catwalk. The question is, how do you get back in the saddle?
Obviously mind blowing, this, but first of all: there's a high and there's too much of it. The heels you see on red carpets are usually about 10cm tall. Hardly anyone can wear them in real life. Even an 8cm heel, standard in many stores, is a big ask. 6cm is a lot to me - looks like a heel without risking breaking your ankle, so if you can filter online by heel height (which you often can, if you fiddle with the filter buttons) , do it.
Oh, and one last thing. You have to learn to walk again. In a high heel you have to take smaller steps than in flats, put your heel first and accept that your pace will be slower.
That's madness, isn't it? Why would we go there? Maybe you've resolved to never wear heels again, in which case I applaud your wise decision. But there's something magical about the extravagant gesture of wearing a heel: the sorcery of the way it shifts your figure, the thrilling sense of an evening pushed to its limits. Turns out I'm not ready to give up heels after all. I am ready to take up the challenge. Though he's also ready to hit the deck.
Model: Shazeeda at Body London. Hair & Makeup: Sophie Higginson in Beauty Kiehls and Tom Ford. Leather coat: mango. Pink pumps: Russell & Bromley
I recently spent a week watching women fall. I hadn't planned to spend Paris fashion week this way, but that's mostly how I remember it. Show after show, the moment that came to mind, replayed over and over, was a model losing her balance and collapsing, or breaking a heel and tripping, or having to throw a pair of impossible shoes and the hold in it. hand while walking barefoot on the track.
At the Vivienne Westwood show, it was the exaggerated platforms that made the shoes impossible to put on. A platform sole is a useful trick to add height without tipping you forward at a dizzying angle. But when there's more than an inch or two of platform, your connection to the ground disappears and you lose the instinct to know which part of your foot should support your weight, for balance.
Descending from a platform, a slender model staggered on a towering shoe, swaying in gentle circles like a bowling pin. For a moment she froze, then a leg of Bambi collapsed beneath her as she hit the ground, just like Naomi Campbell did in 1993. Somehow there had more outtakes than a Laurel and Hardy movie.
Before that, I thought it was me who had forgotten how to walk in high heels. It turns out that even the professionals have a hard time. Walking in heels has nothing to do with cycling. It's much slower, to begin with. It wasn't just the lockdown that put heels out of action, but the long tail of canceled parties and, for most of us, a new rhythm that meant more time at home, less galloping. in town.
But the obituaries written last year for the high heel now seem premature. Heels are on the rise again, both in real life and on the catwalk. The question is, how do you get back in the saddle?
Obviously mind blowing, this, but first of all: there's a high and there's too much of it. The heels you see on red carpets are usually about 10cm tall. Hardly anyone can wear them in real life. Even an 8cm heel, standard in many stores, is a big ask. 6cm is a lot to me - looks like a heel without risking breaking your ankle, so if you can filter online by heel height (which you often can, if you fiddle with the filter buttons) , do it.
Oh, and one last thing. You have to learn to walk again. In a high heel you have to take smaller steps than in flats, put your heel first and accept that your pace will be slower.
That's madness, isn't it? Why would we go there? Maybe you've resolved to never wear heels again, in which case I applaud your wise decision. But there's something magical about the extravagant gesture of wearing a heel: the sorcery of the way it shifts your figure, the thrilling sense of an evening pushed to its limits. Turns out I'm not ready to give up heels after all. I am ready to take up the challenge. Though he's also ready to hit the deck.
Model: Shazeeda at Body London. Hair & Makeup: Sophie Higginson in Beauty Kiehls and Tom Ford. Leather coat: mango. Pink pumps: Russell & Bromley
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