Are These Future Vintage?

The Sartorialist (one of my favorite fellow bloggers) does a special posting for Style every year during the various global fashion shows where he posts pictures of the people attending the shows. I love visiting this addition to his main site and if you are not already checking both that site and his out you should add it to your daily read.

This morning I came across this lovely photo which at first glance you may ask what it is about this shot that caught his eye (and mine)?

It was the shoes


They are from the Fall-Winter Antonio Berardi collection and are part of this seasons trend towards what I like to call - hey-let's-design-a-shoe-with-a-witty-and-yet-utterly-silly-shape-and-see-who-we-can-get-to-wear-em - line of thought.

Ironically, even the young lady wearing them is only wearing them as an experiment.

"Louise chose those shoes because she is writing an article about wearing "crazy" shoes during the hectic Milan fashion week. For the record she admitted that it took full concentration to keep from tipping over as she went carefully went in and out of the shows."

I bet though that despite the full concentration required to walk in these, that they are none-the-less, wait-listed. When it comes to shoes women seem to have a completely different tolerance level for frivolity. Shoes to many of us transcend fashion and enter into this quasi-art world, of which these would happily take center stage should they be treated as a sculpture rather then mere shoes. Or at least that is the excuse I hear from shoe addicted women.......

Don't believe me? Go try on a pair of Louboutins if you don't already have that particular addiction and have already done so. They are stunningly beautiful and so high that, yes, they do hurt to wear them to anything but a sit down dinner. But I still wear em. They sit differently on your feet then most other shoes and at first you think ...no way. But then you see them in the mirror ........ ahh the bloom of love.......

Is that perhaps the case here? Are these an "at first you think - no way" but then your reflection in the mirror showing you standing, seemingly impossibly upright, draws you in and hooks you and the addiction of having shoes no one else would dare to wear catches you in it's clutches and you are caught?

What do you think? Are these an investment that will someday be worth their weight in gold of their ever so witty soles? Are they worthy of being deemed as future vintage or a mere flash in the pan trend that we would all rather pretend never happened - now or 50 years from now?