The hazards of high heels

Reuters

HEAD OVER HEELS: A model falls during the Prada Spring/Summer 2009 Women's Collection during Milan Fashion Week. Spot the reason why.

JOHN SELKIRK/ Dominion Post

HOW HIGH IS TOO HIGH? Super-high platform shoes are causing models to fall on catwalks with alarming regularity.

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The fashion for super-high platform shoes is causing models to fall on catwalks with alarming regularity. If models can’t walk in them, can we? Carolyn Enting dares to find out.

Darn it – I'm loving these platform heels, but so far my pair have spent most of their life in their box. They are super-high blood-red Tony Bianco platforms with a 10cm heel and sexy fringing. Yet I dare not attempt a hill climb or descent in them for fear of breaking a leg.

Then again, these shoes aren't made for walking. They're "city shoes – very Sarah Jessica Parker", Melanie Rogers of Overland Footwear points out.

Despite their impracticality, sales of platform shoes are huge at Overland and Mi Piaci stores, particularly in Auckland and Wellington. "The higher the shoe, the more popular they are – people just can't get enough of them," Rogers says.

Mi Piaci was the supplier of the now infamous ‘Lina' platform heel that saw several of Annah Stretton's models come tumbling down at Air New Zealand Fashion Week last September. People immediately wanted to buy them but Stretton all but snapped up the stock in that style.

The same week in Milan several models dramatically hit the deck after slipping in their platform heels at Prada. "The height of the heels, shape of the shoe, and the fear in the models' eyes made it difficult to concentrate on the clothes. I thought it was quite distressing to watch," Hilary Alexander, Kiwi expat and fashion editor of The Daily Telegraph, London, said after Prada's show.

"I think now is the moment to call time and say basta [Italian for 'enough']."

But the carnage at Prada only seems to have fuelled the fashion for ridiculously high footwear. The most recent high-profile platform crash was spotted behind hand-covered eyes at Herve Leger's show at New York Fashion Week in February of this year where two models fell. In Paris a few weeks later the models at Nina Ricci managed to balance on towering hooves, though the effect was not flattering.

Of course it isn't the first time models have fallen on the catwalk in platform heels. The most famous fall was Naomi Campbell at Vivienne Westwood's show in 1993. Those shoes are now safely behind glass at London's Victoria & Albert Museum.

Westwood is a long-time fan of platforms; she sent out an array of towering platform boots at her most recent showing in Paris last month. Dunedin designer Margi Robertson of Nom*d was in Paris at the time, and met many models worried about walking in the shoes.

"They can be terrifying. A lot of the shoes used for show time are actually way higher than what is [later] offered to the public. In reality designers often take three centimetres off to bring them down to a sensible nine centimetres [when they go in store]," Robertson says.

Personally Robertson is a fan of flats, though if she does ever wear high heels she goes for a platform "because then I'm not teetering, and I'm getting height without the danger".

"It is really important to be wearing very high heels if you are a fashionista, but it is always a very short-lived experience," Robertson says. "Wearing really high heels is currently de rigueur in Paris, but the people I was with who were wearing them were dying to get home to change their shoes. One had a pair of Chucks [trainers] in her bag to change into when she wanted to go home."

It is a common yet unpublicised practice for fashionistas to carry back-up footwear. At New York Fashion Week in 2007 I was embarrassed to be walking to a meeting with Kathryn Neale of American Vogue in my flats, platform heels in my bag. We were meeting on a street corner and then catching a cab to a show together. I was relieved to see she was wearing jandals.

In the taxi we both whipped off our flats and put on high heels. We teetered on the slippery canvas covering the lawn of the show tent as we got to our seats. As soon as it was over, we whipped around the corner, found the nearest park bench, and voila, our feet were comfortably ensconced in flats once more.

Robertson has a theory that the fashion for big handbags is to accommodate that extra pair of shoes. She recommends having a pair of trainers on hand "if you want to get home without falling over, especially if you have had a couple of drinks".

* Carolyn Enting is fashion editor on the Dominion Post.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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