To be completely honest with you, both of these booties kinda scare me. On the one hand, you have the fierce two-tone patent Yves Saint Laurent booties with a solid wood heel vaguely fashioned after a beating stick, and on the other, ominous-looking Givenchy peep-toe booties, ever-so-slightly reminiscent of a fat elephant’s trunk.

Can you imagine their dialog if they ever find themselves alone in a showroom together?

YSL: Hey, Dumbo. Whaaaaz happening?

Givenchy: Hey, who are you talking Dumbo, butt-stick?

YSL: You must spend a lot of time lacing up, lacing up, lacing up…

G.: Listen up, Pinocchio. You think you’re smart but you know what? You haven’t even got a peep-toe hole. That’s right. You’re soooo last season.

YSL: Hey, peep-show, see this patent tip? It has a lead core and it’s reinforced with industrial-grade rubber. You’re going to find that out the hard way when I step on your peeps.

G.: And you have yet to experience of the awesome fierceness of my 200-lb heels. Do you see this? Wait, let me turn around: is that better? I can crush you like a roach.

YSL: Awww. We should get married and have a small army of warrior-booties together.

….and I believe they lived happily ever after.

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I don’t know if she REALLY REALLY loves them, but how else would you explain her wearing them on two occasions with starkly different results?

Here she is in London, looking chic and appropriate for some event involving British royalty, and giving her outfit a bit of an edge with the über-buckled-strapped-and-grommetted Givenchy gladiator bootie-sandals (sandies? boondals?):

(See Shoebunny’s website for more detailed photos).

And then, disaster strikes: a dowdy dress that does nothing for her lovely figure with an oddly hanging bow, and the gladi-bootie-sandals, cutting into the pale flesh of her stems and making her look like she’s an unwilling participant in bondage:

You can buy a similar (though not identical) style of Givenchy gladiator at Shopbop for, oh, about $1000:

…Just promise me you’ll learn from Gwyneth’s mistake and you’ll wear them wisely!

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These Givenchy Gold Gladiators (try saying that fast three times) are something else. I suspect even Romans would sigh over them in ecstasy, “O, quam pulcher est et decorus!” Roughly translated, how beautiful! However, I suspect only the upper classes (and definitly not the gladiators themselves!) could afford the price tag: just under $1000 in select boutiques such as the famous Lane Crawford stores in Hong Kong.

(Via NY Times Style Magazine.)

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Thank goodness for Givenchy, who rescues the wedge from the wave of oblivion it faced from most of the other designers this past week in Paris, and restores it to its shiny, implacable height. Patents, golds, straps, and an inward-turning angle is what makes the Givenchy footwear collection for Fall 2008, with mixed results, in my opinion (for example I believe that the first one shown here, a black patent ankle peep-toe bootie with  superfluous straps, is downright ugly, whereas the last gold strappy wedge is rather cool).

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We’ve seen some outlandish creations so far on the runways of the Couture Spring 08 Paris fashion shows, and some of the shoes have been no exception.  There have also been some who’ve kept their shoes simple.

Riccardo Tisci did just that for the Givenchy show.  He clearly took some inspiration from the ballet, with outfits like this one.

The runway was full of puffed skirts and tutu-like layers.  The shoes stayed simple to match, aping ballerina’s pointe shoe ribbons.  Perhaps not terribly interesting, but elegant and chic.

Instead of lots of different shoes, there were plenty of variations on the same theme.  To wit:

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