(Below: Just look at these cool 1940s shoes in this image of singer Marilyn Hall walking down Hollywood and Vine in Hollywood, CA, August 1944. The ones I am wearing in the picture above are from Sambag, are 2 inches high and super comfortable for the dressy moments. Rocket Originals and Remix do fab 40s reproduction shoes and thankfully some – some – designers still make a good kitten heel. In these lower shoes women managed to be fantastically glamorous. (Yup, they are only 2 inches high and look plenty high enough, don’t they?) Almost all of the shoes from this era are Katharine Hepburn-style flats, have low platforms with a moderate rise at the heel, or are kitten heels like the comfy, 2 inch high kitten heels I’m wearing in the image at the top of the page. But the shoes I wear day to day and on most evenings out are now 1940s and 1950s style shoes (often modern reproductions with better cushioning than they had 60 years ago). I own and enjoy a few pairs, though admittedly the heels are all three and half inches high or less, which by today’s footwear industry standards practically makes them walking shoes. High heels and stilettos are, of course, attractive at times. It’s little surprise Ms Deyn often wears, and designs, Dr Martens.) Every catwalk model has done it, though not always as gracefully. I now no longer shop in those places, because shoe designers offering only towering, badly designed, pin-heeled skyscraper shoes, or ballet flats with soles as thin as cardboard can frankly suck my toe. I don’t care how pretty they look on a shelf. The sheer volume of women hobbling around in downtown Sydney (or pick your major Westernised city), the fact that men rarely, if ever walk around in such visible shoe-induced discomfort, and the reality that more women now reportedly suffer injuries from stilettos than sport, should give us serious pause when we spot what are commonly called ‘skyscraper heels’ for sale in shop windows across our fine city. We’ve all seen the jerky movements of the foot-oppressed as they struggle down the street in eye-watering pain, wearing ill-advised shoes they probably paid a great deal of money for and will most likely hurl across the room when they get home. Well-dressed persons hobbling around in bad shoes – too high, too small, badly designed, etc – very quickly cease to be a well-dressed persons. They don’t look uncomfortable at all! But while this statement – being uncomfortable looks uncomfortable – is not often true of professional photographs because there are teams of stylists and art directors making professional model types (like myself, sometimes) look effortless in ill-fitting stilettos, this adage absolutely holds true for real life: There are loads of hot looking photos of women (and a few men) in extremely high heels. Except that I would not have it any other way, and I’d like to share why: (See: Hate the way modern fashions treat your curves? Go retro.) It’s the classic story really – woman has child, woman starts wearing higher pants and lower shoes. It has been just over a year since I got fed up with not fitting into my pre-baby clothes and decided to get a new, more old school wardrobe.
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