Hey, it’s a recession. I get why a lot of the runway looks I saw in New York were a bit utilitarian. I understand the return-to-the-good-old-days vibe. That doesn’t mean I have to like it. This is why I was so refreshed to see Manish Arora’s collection (and why I deeply wish I had been able to go to Paris to review the collections!)

Manish Arora is an Indian designer who recently got some attention because he designed the dress that a very pregnant M.I.A. wore to the Grammys. I’ll be honest, I know this is shoeblog, and Manish’s shoes were lovely, but it was his clothes clothes that really broke up the fashion monotony. Each model wore this gold and black Raphael Young heel. Beautiful and architectural, its “horns” fit in well with the collection as you will soon see.

Now let’s see the collection. Manish worked with Disney on some of the pieces to create an African Jungle meets the Lion King.

Look at these pieces and envision James Earl Jones, deeply intoning, “Simba, you have forgotten me.”

Would it surprise you if I told you these were some of the less elaborate pieces? Check out the really intense ones!

Look closely at the models faces and note the blue tracery that some of them had. The makeup artist was going for geometric meets tribal tattooing.

In this last dress, you’ll notice that the model is holding her arms rather awkwardly. That is because this dress was MOTORIZED!

The flower petals moved of their own accord as you can see in this video, narrated by Hillary Alexander, Fashion Director of London’s Daily Telegraph.

If you want to see the rest of this collection, go to coutorture.com. Obviously, these pieces are not really wearable. And they have a bit of why-don’t-we-just throw-every-conceivable-waked-out-tactic-at-this-dress disease. But in a sea of depressed designers going back to the alleged “happier times” of the 50s and 80s and the vast array of black coats and and trousers that I’ve seen this year, this Cirque de Soleil hits runway look is refreshing. If it does nothing else, it reminds me that fashion is an art form. The skills required to make some of these pieces is tremendous. From the quilting in the butterfly dress to the pop-up-book-come-to-life lion shoulder, this is certainly something new and different.

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Geren Ford is a lesser-know label but his collection struck me right off because in a sea of crazy, he is making real-people clothes. I want to wear these clothes and on top of that, I have places to wear these clothes. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE aspirational fashion (I wear stilettos in NY for heaven’s sake. I gotsta be crazy.) There are tons of basic blacks shoes at fashion week this year. I will share these with you, but then I will get to a particular standout from this collection: the jewelry.

But first, here are the shoes. I definitely like them; however I wouldn’t wear these shoes in NY. These suckers would get stuck in every grate from here to the Empire State Building.

Especially not these boots.

Cute they may be, but the poor model wearing them was obviously in pain as she stood on her elevated platform. She brought new meaning to The Agony of De-Feet (Da Dum Chsssssss).

So much so that at one point her knees buckled and she almost hit the floor with her skull. Fortunately, a nearby photographer caught her and, quite literally, averted disaster. I guess it’s one time the proximity of the paparazzi came in handy. As glamorous as it seems to be a model, sometimes it’s pretty dangerous. This is not the first model I have seen injured or nearly injured. It’s hard to fird perspective about someone who jets off to Milan and Paris to wear the most covetable clothes in the world.

So the jewelry at Geren Ford was lovely. It had a very rough rock-quartz, geometric look to it and I thought it was ab fab. It was provided by a small label called b-side by ken & dana. You can check out their website here. Statement jewelry is so the in thing right now and these pieces are awesome. Take a gander at the pieces from Geren Ford.

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Around Christmastime, Shomore posted about Claudia Lynch and her delightful Shoe Stories. They are giclee prints of shoe illustrations that she designed. She also writes little pun-filled stories to accompany each one. They are very clever and the illustrations are wonderful!

I was reading through her site when I found the following and just had to share it with you in light of recent fashion week shoes-nanigans and shoe-scapades (Oliver Theyskens, I am talking to YOU):

As I am pretty sure these were up before the Nina Ricci show last week, I must applaud Claudia for her foresight. I love it!

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Ya’ll remember Posh and how she blithely strolled down the stairs at her Fragrance launch last year in Antonio Berardi heel-less hoofers? You’ll remember, at the time that we here at shoeblog held a mini-mock trial to determine if she was utterly bonkers or just an amazing fashion maven. At the time, the pro-Poshers showed very strongly. There is something about her that is deer-in-the-headlights fascinating. She is the reason all the haute couturiers are still in business (I jest, but only slightly). Turns out that she is probably both crazy and amazing but at the same time a veritable Fashion Trend Oracle. Take a gander at what Nina Ricci just showed for Fall 2009.

(photo nymag.com)

Those look like weapons.

I am searching for additional photos, because these have a bit of a trompe l’oeil effect because of the textured background. Yes, the middle and right shoe do, in fact, have heels attached to them, but the heels dangle in the air HIGH above the pronounced platform. Apparently, these added some extreme height to the models. Are you ready for this…these made the ELEVEN inches taller. Almost a whole foot. Yeesh. Sounds like a tall tale (ouch! bad joke) This trend is getting ridiculous. Apparently, the platforms in shoes like this are very heavily weighted toward the toe, the idea being that this will prevent you from falling backward. I suppose there is some credibility to this as no model fell at the Nina Ricci show. There have been quite a few tumbles this season, most notably at Brian Reyes in New York where the models wore perfectly normal, heeled shoes but 5 of them fell. 5! And they literally fell out of their shoes.

Here is a photo from fashionologie.com showing a model carrying the shoes in question:

They don’t look dangerous at all. And yet, they toppled 5 pro-walkers. The shoes wreaked so much havoc that the models ALL went barefoot during the finale. I think this was to prevent the potential domino effect that could have been wrought by the fiendish footwear in the finale.

(photo from daylife.com)

I guess that just proves the credo that it’s the innocent-looking ones that’ll get you in the end.

UPDATED:

Here are a few more photos from Nina Ricci Fall 2009.

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Do you know what new trend in shoes fascinates me? It’s the open-toed heel over tights and/or socks look. It was all over fashion week and it is certainly prevalent on the streets of New York.

Let me tell you a story.

Many years ago, when I was young and carefree, I attended a rather uptight, brick-walled college just outside of Boston. The students of said college were rather….tighty-laced. OK, not all of them. No stereotype works for everybody, but some were. At any rate, I’ve always had my own ideas about fashion and adapted them to suit me. I rarely take things like “weather” and “comfort” into account, but when you go from California to Boston and winter hits you hard, you kinda have to adjust just a little. That first winter at school, I decided that the logical way to deal with winter would be to pair my open-toed shoes with tights and thereby avoid having to spend either of the two pennies I had to rub together on new dressy shoes (broke college students of the world….HOLLLLLAH!). I could also combat the frosbite that was threatening my toes this way. Good compromise, yes? The resounding answer, in the late 90s, was a resounding NO. I eventually caved to peer pressure and horded my work-study money for new shoes, but I was not a happy camper.

The modern equivalent shoe from my sad little story is a hell of a lot better than my attempt at schoolgirl pumps with tights. This look works much better with the modern bootie or multi-strapped sandal and the wide variety of fully-opaque tights that are now available. (In my day, the opaque tights were wore by 6-year-old ballerinas. I had to make do with dark pantyhose. Eek).

Here is one of my favorite looks from fashion week.

I totally guerrilla shot this photo. I am pretty sure she is an editor, what with the whole fashion-forward thing. See the thing socks OVER the skinny jeans INSIDE the open-toed booties. Frankly, I think this whole outfit is cute, but it’s the footwear that makes it. To be honest with you guys, when I first saw open-toed boots and booties, I thought they were the worlds dumbest invention. Honestly, if it’s cold enough to wear boots, it is probably too cold to expose your little piggies to the elements, but this compromise make anything possible.

Another fav was a look I already mentioned to you guys in my earlier post about Band of Outsiders and their collaboration with Loubotin. But to refresh the memory, here is another photo.

The lace-ups look great with the tights. The deliberate contrasting toe works really well with the look here.

I am including this last example just because the shoes are very cool. I know we saw them on the runways last year, but I can’t remember where. At any rate, I think the burnt yellow and purple here works well together. It’s a less-trendy look but still good. Killer heels too.

I guerilla shot another girl in an airport wearing the wide strappy white sandals over black tights. The photo was TERRIBLE, but the look was AWESEOME, so you will have to use your imaginations.

Picture THESE shoes (in white) crossed with black tights and a minidress. The look was awesome!

If you like these shoes, by the by, they are available on Net-a-Porter for $870, courtesy of Bottega Veneta.

I feel that this trend is evolving. I think it actually started out last year on the Spring 2008 runways. I was looking for good examples online and came across this melange from PeoplesChronicle.com.

Despite having admitted that I have done it myself back in the day, I am still not a big fan of the pantyhose with open-toed shoe look. In life, it may save you from frostbite, but on a runway, it’s just lazy. For shame Calvin Klein, Burberry Prorsum, Donna Karan, and Valentino! (photos from those runways.)

What do you think? Are socks with sandals OK in your book?

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