< The fashion shows have kicked off in New York, and those of us who are about to do the rounds of London, Milan and Paris are thinking hard about one pressing wardrobe issue: what to wear on our feet.
Change is coming. Heels are on the rise. Smart trainers and the myriad other flats we’ve been wearing for the past two years are on the way out.
It’s a realisation that’s crept up on me at couture shows in the past month. All the clothes started to blur together after a while. Only one thing jumped out: the sudden upsurge of platform soles, spike heels and high boots.
Then, quick as a flash, Victoria Beckham was snapped last week wearing the most extreme platform Azzedine Alaia lace-up boots since Naomi Campbell fell wearing her Vivienne Westwood ones in 1993.
Now, I don’t consider Victoria Beckham to be a trend-setter, and getting across that arrivals hall at New York’s JFK airport where she was snapped must have been a feat of determination over pain.
But she’s always quick to pick up on the way things are going. Not that I don’t write this with a little chagrin.
Since about 2014, high fashion has given us permission to wear all kinds of flat and comfortable footwear — an eventuality as rare as a blue moon.
The thanks for that should go to Phoebe Philo, head of design at Celine, who gave every woman carte blanche to wear trainers, Vans and Stan Smith tennis shoes with smart coats, trousers and shirts.
And so it worked through: flats, loafers, so-called “athleisure” hybrids of sports shoes, all became part of the convenient daily fashion repertoire for everyone.
But as with all things in fashion, there comes a point when the bloom comes off the unconditional love you feel for something.
The tipping point for me came when Gucci launched a pair of fur-lined backless loafers last year. They were a huge fad with fashion people, but all I saw was a pair of slippers.
That was it. I’m not slopping round in pancake-flat slippers in the street, ever.
From then on, something in the back of my mind was telling me: this is the lowest possible point of this trend. Flatter than this, a shoe cannot go. From now on, the only way has to be up.
So that’s why I’ve leapt at the idea of wearing heels again — for at least some of the time.
A change of heel height is a general fashion refresher. As soon as you alter the height of a heel, it shifts the whole proportion and sense of a look, and you have to be careful with it. If someone’s wearing an “off” shoe, your eye goes straight to it. But I’ve nailed it. Block-heeled boots for bad weather and colourful court shoes for fine. For night, I’ll be wearing Forties-style platforms: try River Island for a brown suede pair.
What’s great about higher heels is that they will give a new life, and swishy elegance, to all the midi-dresses and skirts that are around. They’re also a super-elongating illusion under cropped or on-trend wide-legged trousers.
Boot-wise, the shape should be late Seventies/early Eighties, and easy to walk in.
But here I should be plain: the only reason I can contemplate heels again is the look is so far away from the short, tight dresses that gave platforms such a bad name last time round.
Fashion is a lot more modest and romantic than it was ten years ago, when “body-con” dresses happened.
The way that look of body-dress and humongous heels degenerated into the obligatory costume of tottering gaggles of drunken girls on a city-centre night out has taken a lot of time to forget.
The fact fashion had to run so fast in the opposite direction from that is the reason we all ended up in trainers.
Now, the whole fashion look is different and what you might wear on your legs has changed too.
A decade ago, it might have been fake tan. Now sheer black tights or micro-fishnets give a discreet flash of leg or ankle under a long skirt.
If you’re dressing up for the evening, the aim is to think thirties or forties. That’s where platforms come in. Anyone who remembers Biba will know what I’m talking about. Otherwise, Google Marlene Dietrich.
Whatever’s going on in fashion, as long as your shoes and hair are right, you can get away with wearing the clothes you already own.
My granny, who lived through two world wars dressing well, told me that. How right she was. I haven’t bought a thing this year yet, but if I do, it’s going to be a pair of platforms.
Heels - the new rules:
* Be sure your skirt hem covers the top of boots - no leg flashing.
* Make brightly coloured shoes the focal point - everything else should be black or toned down.
* Wear comfortable block heels in the day.
* Keep platform sandals for elegant evening midi skirts or dresses.
Daily Mail