Shoe blog

Bill Cunningham’s Shoe Declaration

I’ve made my love for Bill Cunningham, the tweedy New York Times street fashion photographer and commentator, well known in the past. Well, Bill has gone to Fashion Week and has made a shoe declaration. (And no, he doesn’t declare that women are in grave danger of having their stilettos fall into subway grates, as this woman is. LA women have to weave adeptly through freeway traffic by putting stiletto metal to the pedal; New York women must constantly be on guard against their heels getting caught in a grate and catapulting them face first onto the ground.)

“This is Fashion Week in New York. In New York, everything is oversized, as always.

On Seventh Avenue, the models, hundreds of them, going to go-sees with designers, or to fittings. There was everywhere, all over the city, something was going on. There was Fashion’s Night Out, on Thursday.

The amazing part about the models, as they went to their go-sees, many of them, with the shoes with the heels. THERE’S NO QUESTION THE SHOE IS THE FORCE OF FASHION AT THIS MOMENT, and the higher and the most treacherous heel, is the one that everyone wants.”

“Except, on Wednesday, I saw something I never thought I’d see in my life, and I’ve been around 80 years. Shoes, platform shoes, without heels. Now you’ve heard of the Chinese binding feet. You want to see women in torture (laughs) — it’s unbelievable. You talk about loony bin.”

“Don’t try the shoes without the heels,” Bill warns.

I’m surprised Bill hasn’t seen heelless shoes yet, but it must have something to do with him photographing street fashion more than runway fashion, and being in New York rather than Hollywood.

I’m sorry, Bill, but I want a pair of heelless heels!

Watch this video for the full dosage of Bill.

Or here are a few of Bill’s rough thoughts on how people in fashion don’t like “pretty” and how Fashion Week is not at all about “reality.”