Manolo says, the espadrilles they have returned to fashionability, and this one, the Prada Cutout Espadrille Wedge has the modern edge that lifts it beyond the usual espadrillic baggage (such as rum-based drinks, peasant skirts, and vacation trysts gone awry).
Manolo says, one of the saddest mathematical formulas of all…
Monday + You + Desk = The End of Yet Another Weekend.
Sigh.
Remember when you were the little girl and you dreamed of growing up to be the prima ballerina/big animal veterinarian who was married to David Cassidy (or Merrill Osmand) and lived on the fifty acre horse ranch located in Central Park? (Actually, you lived in the Plaza, like Eloise. The ranch was across the street.)
And then you wonder…whatever happened to David Cassidy? And so you Google him up and there he is! With the horses and the age-appropriate wife, and he seems uxorious.
And look! He is touring. And so you immediately begin to lay plans to go to Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania (wherever that is) in February. And you email you best girlfriend ever, Melissa, and start thinking about your outfit, as only the best will do for your former fantasy husband!
Pennsylvania in February? You will need fabulous boots…from Prada!
Sophisticated, worldly, intellectual Prada.
And the next thing you know you are singing to yourself, and you think that Mondays are perhaps not so bad after all.
Manolo says, the Manolo has been predicting the end of the ultra-extreme towering heels for many months now, and at last it has come to pass, as announced by Leon Andre Talley himself.
Designers with an obsession for towering torture chambers, often poorly designed for the well-being of the foot, must get a reality check. I, for one, am over the mania for the high, high heel. Too many career women look like a herd of fashion beasts, aping one another in impractical shoes . . . Can’t anyone take a cue from First Lady Michelle Obama, in the elegant low-heeled shoes she always wears? A flat would be nice.
Of the course, the reason that the First Lady wears the flats has less to do with the comfort and more to do with her amazonian stature.
Be that as it may, the Manolo agrees that the heels had gone beyond what was both advisable and attractive. It was time for the predictable reaction, the return to more practical shoes.
Thus, the old hotness.
Ridiculous shoes in which you cannot walk.
Versus, the new hotness.
The Low Heels of High Spark Girls.
Manolo says, it is Monday and you are back at your desk and mightily ungruntled.
Indeed, it may be said that now is the summer of your discontent, made gloomy winter by that son of the so-and-so, whom you have been dating for this past month.
Oh, it all started out well enough; him tall, moderately handsome, tanned, and somewhat hairy in that outdoorsy way that makes dirty cargo shorts and Keen sandals seem sexy, especially when you are standing behind them in the Whole Foods Market.
Next thing you know, you are at the coffee shop lying about your politics and discussing the relative merits of recumbent bicycles with him over tall glasses of iced chai.
And for the first week everything goes swimmingly, even if the thought of tofu-vegetarian lasagna makes you gag, and you frequently worry that he might detect the scent of your usual lunch ( cheesesteak, “Whiz, wit“) lurking beneath your body spray.
By the end of the second week, however, you have discovered the awful truth, that his low-impact, ecologically friendly lifestyle is actually camouflage for the deep and abiding parsimoniousness; the pinchpenny cheapness so mean that he has never bought salt, sugar, ketchup, or mustard for home use, relying instead on the giant cache of pilfered condiment packets which reside in his cabinets, ever ready to season his “famous” lentil stew.
At first you think this trait is funny, because his eyes have this unusual purpley-blue color that reminds you of mountain lupin, and fogs your better judgment. But then, this past Friday, you realized that not only had you gone Dutch so often that you could apply to Amsterdam for citizenship, but that he had the bad habit of “forgetting” his wallet at home.
Even this would not be so awful, except that he was also, at the same time, revealed as the sanctimonious bore, forever going on about “out of control American consumerism”, (although when you mentioned Thorstein Veblen, whom you find terribly amusing, his lupin-blue eyes went blank with incomprehension).
But it was on Saturday, while he was ranting away about the “malign influence of fashion”, that you finally snapped, and told him exactly how much your Jimmy Choo sandals cost–”More than you’ve spent on personal hygiene products in a decade, Tofurky Boy.”– which left him gibbering in amazement and spluttering in anger.
Okay, so perhaps that was uncalled for, even if it did make you feel immediately better.
And now it is Monday and you are consumed with remorse for the three-and-the-half weeks you wasted on this crunchy loser and his skinflint ways.
But then you remember that nothing washes away the bitter taste of romantic disappointment like shoes, beautiful and riveting shoes, like these simple summery, golden Linea Rossi Sport sandals from Prada.
Manolo says, the Manolo’s good friend Linda Grant has pointed us to the article about the surrealist Prada shoes in the Telegraph, which contains the wonderfully brilliant observation, one which accords perfectly with the beliefs of the Manolo.
What, exactly, is the point, you might well ask? You probably won’t be able to walk very far in these shoes, and you certainly can’t run in them; so what is one meant to do with them? Put them on a mantelpiece, like a quirky sculpture? This is always an option – a perverse one, I grant you – but I have a theory, borne out by years of personal practice, that if you love a pair of beautiful shoes, however fantastical, you are miraculously able to dance in them. Thus the right heels – and you know them when you find them – will lift the spirits as well as the feet.
Finally, the statement which sums up the totality of the Manolo’s existence: Beautiful shoes make you happy!
Manolo says, here it is the first Monday in March and Old Man Winter is still battering away at your resolve and sanity.
“Any day, now,” you keep saying to yourself, “the sun will break through, the snow will melt, and Spring will be here.”
But then you get up in the morning, and leave the house, only to be assaulted by freezing rain, or hail, or snow, or some deadly combination of freakish weather that leaves you cursing the weatherman and his ignorant ilk.
Oh for the simpler days, when all that was necessary to make the sun shine was to throw the few sacrificial captives into the gaping maw of the bottomless limestone hole that led to the subterranean realm of Gaa’agkai, the God of Inclement Weather.
“First to the edge of the sacrifical hole,” you shout at the heavens, the stinging rain whipping across your face, “Al Roker!”
Oh well, at least when you get to the office you can look at the beautiful vernal shoes, like these Camoscio Deco Suede Platform Sandal from Prada. It even has the spring flower on the insole!
Manolo says, winter still has its icy fingers around our collective throats, but that is not reason to dream of the day when you will be free of this pestilential weather. And when that blessed day arrives, you will walk out onto the warm sand, in shoes that make you feel like the Greek Goddess, shoes such as these beautiful Corallo Oro sandals from Prada.
Manolo says, yes it is only January, and the spring is still decades away. How you long for the coming of the summer, when you can wear beautiful, strappy sandals from clever designers without feeling conspicuously out of place.
Look! it is the new Summer 2008 sandals from Prada! Is that the ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds?
Manolo says, it is odd, but when the Manolo looks at this beautiful Prada Linea Rossa t-strap sandal the first word that leaps into his mind is “honesty”.
Yes, this shoe is beautiful, but it is not frivolous. It does not try to beguile you with false charm and needless frippery. It simply stands there before you, unadorned, possessed only of the natural beauty of its clean lines.
It is like the handsome woman in the full-bloom of middle age, demanding that you judge her not by the shallow and popular standards of our day, but by that which is eternal and unchanging. That there are many who will not recognize her beauty does nothing to diminish it.
