Hello all and welcome to Bryant Park 2009! Or rather Spring 2010 (bet you didn’t know that fashion can involve time travel). I have seen many collections right up close and some famous folks, from somewhat farther away. There have been clothes! There have been uppity PR people. And there have been some amazing shoes.

Let get this started.

Vena Cava, the edgy design duo that becomes more and more beloved by young New York with every passing season showed their collection in a runway/presentation combo. First, the girls came out walking to the music of The Fiery Furnaces. Then they stopped and perched on metal ladders so that onlookers could see the fine detailing of the collection up close. For the most part, the shoes were standard chunky-heeled numbers, but a gold heeled bootie and another with cut-outs added some edge to an edgy collection. Oh! And they used electric boogaloo….I mean blue polish on the toenails and black on the fingernails. I am loving the hypercolor nail trend! Here are my photos:

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The gold ones are kinda modern Doc Martern-y. Cute, fun, and solid.

Scorecard

Vena Cava shoes by Robert Clergerie: B

Check out the awesome tribal-inspired jewelry they had as well:

Oh my god, is that a bustier top and an acid washed dress? I am SO having a Buffy the Vampire Slayer THE MOVIE flashback because that is like so totally retro. (A la Hilary Swank in her, I will do ANYTHING to be in a movie days)

Just for fun:

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Though the assorted Fashion Weeks for Fall 2009 have come and gone, I have decided to do one more designer specific post. Louis Vuitton (which is to say, Marc Jacobs and his specific brand of Frenchified crazy) showed at the very end of Paris Fashion Week. Initially, I was not going to post about the shoes, but then, like the Kylie Minogue song of the the same name, I just can’t get ‘em out of my head. And since misery loves company, here’s a bit of my obsession comin’ atcha.

The source of my obsession are the “hourglass heels” (see my fancy made up wordage?) on each shoe.

Exhibit A:

This pair in particular eez so Freaaaanch, non? With the velvet bow, red and black motif, beads, and a bit of sparkle, that there is a can-can dancer reincarnated as a shoe. But I digress. So often, the heels that designers stick on shoes are pure shock value all the way. Often, it’s fabulous. Don’t stop, designers! You would leave we shoebloggers with significantly less to write about. However, here is an unusual heel on an awesome shoe that seems like it would help rather than hurt the wearer. I mean just look at it. Increased groundage-to-heel ratio = more practical shoe. And that’s jut a mathematical fact.

The other thing I think is awesome about these is this entire power play scenario that I developed in my head where you got bigger beads on your hourglass shoe if you were a more “popular” model. Like if a model books a big job, she gets to trade up her bead size or something. It’s like in middle school, where the popular girls had progressively fancier and fancier friendship bracelets. But that’s clearly just in my head OR IS IT? Look here:

HER BEADS ARE BIGGER THAN MINE!

Sheesh. Now I’m not digressing, I’m regressing.

This delightful motif also showed in the super dramatic thigh-high boots that Marc showed. Some were metallic, some had full-on patent leather lace up (dominatrix whip sold separately). Here are some more photos.

I WANT the white ones more than I want to breathe. OK, that’s a smidgen of an overstatement. So do these babies get you guys all choked up inside the way they do me? Or have I finally gone off the deep end. (Mind you, positive answers to both questions will be accepted.)

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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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