Manolo’s Shoe Blog

Manolo says, where are the jump suits? The Manolo was promised that the future would include silvery jump suits, not fairly pedestrian bikinis and lycra.

But of the course, this video begs the question: what will the clothes of the future look like?

To which the Manolo answers, who knows? There are not even that many peoples who can predict next years trends, much less those of the distant future.

In 500 years time we could all be immortal, disembodied heads in jars, riding around on giant metallic robots, talking about how great it was when we had bodies, and wishing we could die.

Or, we could be post-apocalyptic cavemen, in which case, fur will make the big come back.

Either way. 50/50 says the Manolo.

P.S. Be certain to stay for the final minute of this video, when things take the turn for the painfully ridiculous.

P.P.S. Many thanks to the Manolo’s friend, the super fantastic Xeni. She is not just the blogger, she is also the internet television star!!!

Manolo says, remember these beautiful and unusual Prada Ombre shoes from last season, with the sfumato gradient effect?

It seems that Stuart Weitzman does…

In the coming months you will undoubtedly see more modestly priced shoes with this same look.

Manolo says, you must go look at this posting from the Coveted. It is based on last week’s article in the New York Times about the lack of black models on the runways of this seasons New York fashion week shows.

Here is the excerpt from the Times.

Of the 101 shows and presentations posted on Style.com during the New York runway season, which ended a month ago, more than a third employed no black models, according to Women’s Wear Daily. Most of the others used just one or two. When the fashion caravan moved to London, Paris and Milan, the most influential shows — from Prada to Jil Sander to Balenciaga to Chloé and Chanel — made it appear as if someone had hung out a sign reading: No Blacks Need Apply.

The article is quite good and not the little disturbing and depressing, and thus it is well worth the reading.

What Jennine at the Coveted has done is gather together the head shots of the models from the runway shows, and in so doing has dramatically shown that the look of the moment is very pale, young, skinny, and blond. But when has it not always been thus?

Manolo says, that the infamous metrosexual Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan!

Hair implants have become commonplace [in Pakistan] in the past few years as wealthier urban males embrace cosmetic treatments that were once regarded as effeminate and even unIslamic. From facials to manicures, back waxes to eyebrow threading, a host of services are now on offer at a growing number of spas, salons and clinics catering to the male market.

“I never bothered with this before,” Humayun, 28, said after a facial at the Islamabad branch of Depilex Men, part of the biggest chain of beauty parlours in Pakistan. “I guess there’s just more pressure on men to look good these days.”

The trend may be confined to the upper and middle classes, estimated at 20-30 million people, but it illustrates how Western-style media, marketing and celebrity culture are changing Pakistani society. Five years ago most Pakistani men wore only the traditional salwar kameez - a loose-fitting cotton pyjama suit. The standard hairstyle was a short back and sides. Deodorant was considered unmanly. Moisturiser? Forget it.

[…]

However, in the big cities of Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar, where dozens of television channels are now available, men are becoming ever more conscious about their clothes, coiffures and complexions – so much so that a recent talk show on Dawn News, a new English-language television channel, asked whether Pakistan was going through a “metro-sexual” revolution.

Now all we must do is find the beautician who does Osama’s hair.

Manolo says, Manolo’s very good friend Linda Grant, author of the wonderful piece in the Guardian about the declining standards of dress and comportment, has returned to add more to our very vibrant discussion of this important topic.

I would like to thank those of you who responded so positively to my Guardian piece about declining standards of dress. I believe that dressing appropriately for the occasion is simply a question of good manners, as well as to give ourselves the pleasure of wearing whatever in our wardrobes is best, just as we vary our diet, adorn our homes with nice things, and enjoy a beautiful view. In the past, even the most impoverished families, had garments that they called their ‘Sunday best’ clothes which they wore for special occasions. The dumbing down of dress is in part a product of prosperity, for when a pair of jeans can cost as much as an evening gown, who knows who is expensively dressed?

The morning the article came out, a friend reminded me that at her brother’s wedding, a few years ago, one guest arrived at the reception in shorts. Now the bride and groom were theatre folk, not actors, but a writer and a director, and one sensed that this minor celeb simply felt that the happy couple were simply not important enough to get dressed up for. The true star among the guests, Hugh Laurie (of ‘House’) and his wife were dressed entirely appropriately for a July wedding, she in a hat. As someone in the comments remarked - class, you’ve got it or you haven’t.

Two people who have class are Tizzy and her husband, who, unable to celebrate their wedding anniversary at an expensive restaurant, went to an ordinary one and dressed up anyway, he in a tie and she in a cocktail dress bought on the clearance rack for $9.99. Mr and Mrs Tizzy understand the notion of a memorable occasion. I thought of them last night at a glittering event held here in London, the private view of the new exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum on the Golden Age of Couture. For standing in front of me as we listened to a speech by Ines de la Fressange, once a Chanel model, was a woman who had chosen from her entire wardrobe to wear at this event – jeans and a t-shirt. Mr and Mrs Tizzy, despite their modest income, would, I know, have nonetheless found the prefect outfits to have attended such an occasion. To be well-dressed comes not from the bank balance, but what is inside your own head.

Manolo says, the Manolo’s good friend, the Linda Grant, has written the much needed piece in today’s Guardian about the sloppiness of the modern restaurant patron.

Forty or 50 years ago, when a couple went out to dine the men wore suits, ties (preferably regimental) and shined shoes, and the women would be in cocktail dresses, heels and even mink stoles. The dress code of an establishment was directly linked to the numbers of pieces of cutlery at each place setting. Judging by the films of the period, there might also be a small dancefloor, and a band.

There was always the suspicion that restaurants imposed dress codes so that oiks would be prevented from getting any further than the front door. Now you can wear anything you like. You can blame it on the fact that eating out is no longer classified as a special occasion. Or perhaps that the price of meals is so astronomical, in London at least, that diners can no longer afford expensive clothes. Or that the competition between proliferating numbers of restaurants is so intense that owners can’t afford to place restrictions on who can and can’t come in. And for celeb diners, who can always get a table at a full restaurant at 8pm, there are no rules.

[…]

This change extends beyond restaurant etiquette - no one goes to the theatre or opera in evening dress any more. The outfits photographed on the red carpet have no occasion except the red carpet. Apart from weddings, when are we allowed to dress up? What are all those clothes doing in the shops, if we have no place any more to wear them because of the relentless dumbing down of dress? It is a depressing experience to sit in a beautiful room eating delicious food and see at the next table a party dressed in beige fleeces and Cornish pasty shoes. Surely going out is all about dressing up, about making an effort, about suiting the clothes to the activity?

This is one of the more lamentable changes of the past three decades, this slow inexorable slide of the general population into sweat pants and crocs.

Yes, right now you are going out to eat at the fancy restaurant in the pressed bluejeans and polo shirt.

“It is okay,” you say to yourself, “at least I am dressed better than this restaurant’s celebrity owner…” Who has just at that moment come shambling out of the kitchen wearing the scruffy beard, the orange crocs, the scarf made out of sausage, and what appears to be no pants, just the dirty apron.

And so, one more step toward the slippery slope has been taken.

Next thing you know, you have ditched the polo and pressed jeans for the tattered cutoffs and the stupid/ironic-ironic/stupid hipster t-shirt that you pulled from the dirty laundry hamper moments before leaving the house.

So what if you are the 45-year-old senior vice president at the bank, you only live once, eh? No reason to put on the old monkey suit, not when everyone else looks like orangutans.

The Linda Grant is so completely and terribly right, we are losing our occasions to dress up.

Manolo says, the platforms are out. It must be true, because the USA Today has said so.

It took one swift kick from the new shoe trend — ballet flats — to topple platforms from their perch.

“Quite simply, customers have had enough of high heels,” says Robert Burke, president and founder of luxury consulting firm Robert Burke Associates. “Flats seem young and fresh.”

It certainly helps that they’re easier to wear than the ankle-wrenching wedge, and they can look elegant or coquettish with this year’s empire-waisted dresses, hot pants and capris. And despite a more casual work attitude, flip-flops and sandals flunk many office dress codes, but flats won’t.

“As for the customer older than 40, platforms never really were popular this time around,” says Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at the NPD Group. “But offer women ballet flats, and they’ll take them in a second. Flats are just so comfortable. If I gave you permission to wear slippers to work, you would, wouldn’t you?”

Of the course, this is not news to the readers of the Shoe Blog, as the Manolo was predicting just this eventuality in February of this year.

Although, to judge from the height and the color and the excessive strappiness we have moved from the restrained and classical period of the platforms into the final decadant period before they leave the scene for the few years. You have until perhaps the end of the year to enjoy them.

And thus it came to pass.

Manolo says, many of the Manolo’s internet friends have been emailing him the link to this story.

It is 8 o’clock on a serene blue morning in Beverly Hills and Dr Ali Sadrieh, a podiatrist, has just performed a 45-minute operation on a client, cutting a section of bone out of her toe to shorten it. She was awake during surgery, watching a film; next week Sadrieh will do the same thing to the second toe on the other foot. There was nothing medically wrong with the toes, but his patient didn’t like the way they protruded over the lip of her high-heeled Manolo Blahniks.

Welcome to the wilder shores of La-La Land, where cosmetic surgery has finally travelled the full length of the female form. […]

Feet are the new frontier: our legs are all waxed and tanned now, but look where they end: in a scrubland of hard heels, yellowing nails, bumps, lumps and toe hair. And everything is on show: the ascendancy of the shoe designer has strapped us into whip-thin sandals and vertiginous heels, at once revealing our imperfections and aggravating them: is that an incipient bunion there? A touch of toe-besity? In America the high priests of podiatry are offering salvation.

Frankly, the Manolo doubts the widespread popularity of this trend, simply because of the appearance of this B-List celebrity foot.

The bunion in these fetish shoes belongs to that dreary spotlight hound, the Posh Spice.

You may be assured that if she–the connoisseur of plastic surgery–has not yet had the feet operated upon it is because she has not yet thought it fashionable.

Of course, this is not to say that one should not worry about the foot beauty, only that there are less drastic measures to beautify the foot, measures which stop short of surgery.

Manolo says, here from the Daily Mail is that saucy trollop the Victoria “Posh” Beckham wearing the ridiculous and dangerous looking spikey shoes.

And thus, with this picture, the Manolo now officially declares 2007,

The Year of the Fetish Shoe.

Forget for now the beautiful, elegant, and stylish shoes, and wear only those shoes which emphatically say to the public “the wearer of these shoes may be hired to satisfy your more outré desires.”

Five and the half inch stiletto heels? The height of fashion!

Weird dominatrix boots? Wear them to the red carpet!

Bizarre and clunky pony-play platforms ? Hottest shoe of the Fall!

It is all too much and too ridiculous, but do not worry, dear friends of the Manolo, this fashion moment shall pass.