In the high school pantheon of designers, Dr. Chanel is the in-control principal, Mr. Lagerfeld is the mysterious superintendent, Ms. Von Furstenberg is the wise favorite teacher, Donatella is the bad girl playing hooky, Ralph is the classic quarterback, Marc is the prom queen, Kate and Laura Mulleavy are the strange but cool girls in art class, Stella is the earnest, slightly annoying activist … and then who’s that freak sitting there alone in the corner?

Yeah, the shy, fey, emaciated weirdo wearing some sort of Edward Scissorhands punk-goth getup that makes Lagerfeld look like a sweet old biddy in lacy doilies. The one kindly but intently ignoring Ms. Von Furstenberg’s lectures, making some sort of very intense origami construction with the plastic from his binder, a sheet of black tire rubber from the high school parking lot, a razor and a match.

That nobody there’s Gareth Pugh, and you’ll know him now by the 2008 ANDAM Award blinding you from his ratty black tee.

Revenge against popular culture is sweet, and a dish best served cold. The Central Saint Martins designer is not malicious and in fact comes across as sweet and shy, but sometimes you get the feeling that ole Gareth is playing a joke on all of us, an extended prank that he’s seeing how long it will take us all to get.

Almost everything Gareth makes could be a circus tent/vent disaster on black-and-white platforms. Witness below a piece I love but almost any other designer would probably mess up royally:

Gareth can also do sexy, in his own strange way:

The saving grace from his pieces of weirdness are that they’re done so incredibly well; the vents are so fantastically, precisely done, the silhouettes are so bizarre and masculine a la Storm Trooper chest shield/body armor, the long Elizabethan ruffs are so architecturally stable, and then he goes and says things like: “It’s kind of that essence of beauty, that duality… A flower looks the most amazing just before it’s about to die.” In Hint Magazine in 2005, he was quoted as saying that his skirts were “about the struggle between lightness and darkness, like Nancy Kerrigan versus Tonya Harding.”

How could you not love a designer who says something like that? But in this case, the bite of reality is stronger than the bark of mythos, and Gareth really follows through on what he says.

Let’s take a closer look at a couple samples from Gareth’s first shoe collection.

Simple, but perfect. And the accentuation on the appropriate legwear (black and white tights that are a fluid part of the shoe, nearly indistinguishable) and makeup (black solid lashes that are white on the sides) definitely reinforces the fact that a shoe can be subtle in color but still shout its presence from the rooftops if you play it right. It makes me think of Chanel’s classic black shoes with white cap toes, worn with black tights, so that the whole leg was black except for a tippy-toe of white peekaboo. Designers are saying, let’s think beyond our shoes to the perfect legwear for each pair.

The most fantastic thing about these shoes is that they are black and chunky in the back, warping into a whole other shoe when you see them from that angle, complemented by tights that are black in the back. It’s all about perception with Gareth’s work, shading and depth and angles and proportion. Storm Troopers plunging into a visual wrinkle in time and space.

But Gareth, I believe we can see weirder, more whimsical, more fantastic, both darker and lighter in shoes from you. And yes, that’s a challenge from an ardent fan.

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Each fashion season, it’s always fun for me to see what the designers do to that shoe part called the heel. Paris Fashion Week tends to bring out the most beautiful and sometimes the most outlandish heels of all the fashion shows and Paris Spring 2009 was no exception. Here’s a quick retrospective of the heels. Which were your favorite?

John Galliano swirly metallic platform shoe

Alexander McQueen amber heel and tornado heel

Miu Miu and the painted wedge with burlap sack bow heel

Lanvin bejeweled heel

Chanel duster heel

Stella McCartney clear chunky heel

Dior fertility goddess heels

YSL and the wireframe heels

My personal favorite was the YSL wireframe heel above.
Photos from Style.com

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After getting over my shock at seeing how downright fabulous Stephanie Seymour (she’s 40!)  and Naomi Campbell (38) looked on the Western themed Hermes Spring 2009 runway, my attention finally turned to the shoes.

Although I couldn’t see much of a tie-in between the Western theme and these art deco shoes by Pierre Hardy, I’m a fan of the Hermes scarf ring-like shoes  - I wonder, can a Hermes scarf be threaded in between the rings? And while I like the narrow platform, I suspect that the height of the heel and the shifting sand runway doesn’t make these models’ job easy to walk in.

More than any other fashion house, Hermes is known for their exotics.  It’s appropriate that these shoes come in lizard skin as well.

Finally, is this the beginning of the Western motif and Hermes equestrian roots coming into play?   Sure, these aren’t riding boots, but I love a versatile slouchy/tall flat boot.

And no cowboy theme would be complete with blue jeans.  But I have to wonder, was Jean Paul Gaultier inspired by Katie Holmes when he jumped on the rolled up jean trend?

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Back in my college days, I would often have second thoughts about my chosen major, computer science & engineering. Although there was never a wait for the bathroom stalls of the engineering building due to the insanely high ratio of male:female in the engineering classes (it was only time in my entire life where the boys had a longer wait time than the girls), more often than not the classes and material weren’t interesting enough to me.

How I wish the professors would have taken a cue from the YSL Spring 2009 runway! In graphics, if I were given an assignment to create a 3-D wireframe of the YSL heels below, I surely would have excelled. In physics, if I were asked to measure the pressure and force exerted on the heel, I would have been a much more devoted student than I was.

School aside, I love the practicality of this shoe. In a season where shoes have been soaring to new heights, it’s downright refreshing to see shoes which dare I say, might actually be walkable? Chunky heels are often too bulky for my tastes, but the thin metal/ lattice work structured heels helped offset the thickness of the heel and help with balance. I’m also a fan of the cage fishnet on the vamp and around the ankle. Toes might accidentally get caught in the netting when putting on the shoe, but the waffle grid lines sure are neat

Images via Style.com

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Ever since viewing the Karl Lagerfeld Spring 2009 RTW photos, I can’t seem to get the theme song from The Jetsons out of my head. The clothing as well as the shoes have that distinct retro-futuristic look that is reminiscent of dozens of 1960’s science fiction movies. There’s definitely a Judy Jetson goes to the dark side vibe going on here.

[Via google images]

The Clothes:

The Shoes:

[Fashion Photos via Style.com & Elle.com]

And, yes, the shoes match quite harmoniously with the clothing presented on the runway. And I rather liked the overall lines and details of this collection. However, I do have my doubts on whether the flared ankle-cuff-cum-lampshade can match harmoniously with a real-life ‘modern’ wardrobe (as opposed to the runway fantasy version of the future seen here). After all, lampshades belong on lamps; anywhere else on your body and you’re likely to be the talk of the party.

So, sing with me:

Meet George Jetson.
His boy Elroy.
Daughter Judy.
Jane, his wife.

See, I can’t stop humming. It’s okay for you to join in, nobody needs to know.

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