I Have No Season Either

These are the new Spring 08 Junko Shimada platforms that are apparently starting a frenzy. They are predicted to be wait-listed and where inspired by"temples & Tibetan architecture"

uh huh

and if you are already in lust for any of those three pairs, then perhaps your eyes have already flashed down to the next set of pictures in this post and you are waiting for me to tell you who made those two wild beauties and where you can get them

well honey, you are S.O.L

Both of these shoes are vintage Salvatore Ferragamo and they where made in and around 1940.

Of course, if you are a devoted vintage girl you knew this right off the bat,
but I bet I just shocked a few of you

I find it an endless source of amusement that the "new", "outrageous & ever-so-forward" designs that are often touted as being 'spectacular' have their roots in something made so long ago. In fact, had I put this to the test, I bet most girls would have guessed at best that the first set of shoes shown above where at very most inspired by the seventies.

Which they where...sort of .... it's just that the seventies where inspired by the 40's, and I bet if I took a day or so I could dig up some kick ass platforms from the early days of the Chinese dynasty...they rocked some serious shoes back in the day before they got into that whole crippling women's feet thing.

No, the point of this post is NOT to say that you shouldn't go out and buy new shoes,
in fact, it's the opposite. Please, do go and buy a bold and outrageous pair of shoes this season
and then maybe even wear them with a fabulous vintage frock from Shrimpton Couture.......
but isn't it just sort of an interesting thing to know that back in the 1940's there was a fabulous girl rocking her platforms?

Think of your perception of what the 1940's where all about
and the kind of girl who lived back then.
Now put that girl in those shoes.

Sort of changes your perception of those days does it not?

Saying you are inspired by Temples and architecture is fine - but sounds a bit hollow to me.
I prefer the words of Ferragamo himself - in this quote he is talking shoes of course, but I prefer to take his words and apply them to what I believe vintage is about in general:

'normally I do not institute new fashions,
there are a number of dress and shoe designers who struggle to be
-different- for the sake of being different, meaning that they want to impose
a startling new fashion line upon the woman'
(from the autobiography of salvatore ferragamo, the shoemaker of dreams,
london, 1957). 'but if designers must wait for their customers to become
conscious of new styles who, then, determines fashion?…
the answer is: new fashion begin in the mind of the designer.
he must not stifle all his ideas merely because the world is not yet
ready for them. I have no season”.