It's glam time for fashion footwear this winter. Jude Hathaway reports.
One stand-out aspect of women's fashion footwear this season is the amount of disarming design detail, and not only in high-end special occasion shoes. It's covering all styles in a kind of Christian Louboutin-meets-Mad Max way.
Most impact is seen where designers of leading fashion brands have added artful embellishments to the traditional practical styles for the 2013 winter footwear story, aptly described as ''utility luxe''.
Usually firmly grounded brogues, jodhpur boots and loafers have been thoroughly made over. It might be with gold or silver-tipped buckles or staunch studs and chains. It could be with banks of beading, metallic trim, or gold embroidery. Combat-style boots have chains, studs and spikes. Even the Western boot has arrived sequinned and sensual.
It's a season of low heels with high appeal.
But the glam-overs do not stop here. At the opposite end of the fashion spectrum they have taken classic ladylike '50s fine-heeled court styles and demure slippers and added flashes of gleam and sheen, or gem and sequin coatings. Metal toe-caps and heels add vibrant flourishes, while spikes and studs supply rock chic. New Zealand footwear designer Kathryn Wilson sees the variety of textures and their imaginative mixes as pivotal this season.
''In winter, designers get away with having more luxurious features on shoes and boots, as opposed to the summer when it's more about poppy colours and simple lines,'' she points out.
The Kathryn Wilson winter collection uses a mix of metallic leathers, and faux lizard and snakeskin embossed on to calf leather. The reptile skin fronts up in canary yellow, turquoise and dark orange, which adds interest both in colour and texture to ankle and mid-calf boots as well as brogues.
Other mixes in the range include tweed, calf hair and suede, adding flair to traditional oil-finish calf leathers. The richness of the collection is also seen in the matador-style heavy gold embroidery detailed on the back of the classic platform pump, which comes in various colours of snakeskin including deep orange.
''The embroidered detailing is a nod to the baroque brocade finishes which are a feature of fashion-wear,'' Wilson points out.
''We used metallic thread that is not too bold or garish.''
At footwear outlets such as fashion-forward store Mi Piaci, in Dunedin, the celebration of imaginative, wearable shoe design is apparent. Mi Piaci is a New Zealand owned and operated family business which sources shoes, often with design input, from around the world for its stores. This year it has presented three winter stories, the earthy Country Folk, Orient Express and Dark Romance collections, that eloquently wrap up the international trends.
Inspired decorative details are seen in the exotic and feminine Orient Express range, which has nuances of the sophisticated and indulgent between-war years of the 1920s and '30s. Suede and patent slippers sit alongside delicately designed slim-heel courts beautifully embellished with metallic detailing.
But most dramatic is the Dark Romance collection, an explosion of gem-, sequin- and stud-encrusted footwear that embraces everything from Western-inspired suede ankle and mid-calf boots to elegant high-heeled dress shoes.
Brogues have been injected with uptown swagger, using glossy patent leathers, often with rich gemstone detailing, while classy loafers move to a two-toned retro beat.
''It's in the shoes and the ankle boots, as opposed to the high knee boots, that most of the decorative fun is seen,'' store manager Amelia Chilton said.
''This is because the more expensive classic high boots are considered an investment that will last years, rather than a season or two.''
Ankle boots, from fierce to ladylike, are this season's big hit. And one wonders if Paul Simon's song Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes influenced the designer of the Mi Piaci high-heel ankle boot which features glitter on the instep of the sole. Ah, the romance.
