It’s been an exciting season hasn’t it? From Christian Siriano’s claws to Vuitton’s tassels and McQueen’s futuristic snake shoes, we have seen quite an array of fascinating footwear. But wait! I think we’ve missed an entire demographic. Why that’s right, it’s time for Fashion Week footwear OFF the runway. The editors, buyers, and general fashion public really bring out the big guns when they do the Spring fashion season. It’s as if the entire year is just a lead up to these weeks when they can bust out their arsenal of couture footwear. Are you ready to see some candid photos of what illustrious industry members around the world wore as they took in the Spring collections. Yes, I think you are.

To get started, let’s go ahead and just do away with a common fashion myth. Who says you can only wear shoes on your feet?

Just kidding, but I love the photo!

There were several through-lines at the collections this year. Unsurprisingly, spangles, studs and spikes were all the rage. Several of these shoes can doubles as weapon. And why not? James Bond often carried weapons in his shoes. These just take it to the next level.

Level 1: Add a few studs to your heels or loafers. Look slightly dangerous.

Level 2: Have Maison Martin Margiela get out the hammer. “People will say you’re crazy. You’ve got nails in the soles of your shoes.”

Level 3: Take it up a notch with ankle weapons.

Level 4: Break out the steel-toed boots. Look angry.

Level 5: Get your shitkickers on. Take no prisoners.

Another popular trend was to add a splash of color or pattern through the footwear to make the whole outfit pop as demonstrated in the following exhibits:

Exhibit A: A gorgeous teal YSL Trip Too Platform heels makes this very on-trend bnw graphic combo pop!

…or you could go the other way and add a Black and White combo to an more understated look with the babies:

Exhibit B: Amerie slips into some leopard print heels to add another element to her gorgeous red/black/white dress:

Exhibit C: LOVE the dress, LOVE the bead, LOVE LOVE LOVE the amazing colorblock heels.

Hey and speaking of colorblocking, check these out. This woman was a model-wrangler. She had to physically move the models from one place to another for 2 consecutive hours. SHe was on her feet and in motion contiuously. She looked amazing and not once did I see her wince. She looked a bit like she might hurt you if you got in her way but…:

Color also showed up in girlier forms:

“Look, bitches, it’s SPRING. I will wear FLOWERS. Yes, I am aware that it is September outside, but inside this tent it’s APRIL! Ya get me?”

“So yesterday, I was trying to figure out what I should wear to Fashion Week. I got out all my old mags and brainstormed and though, ya know Miu Miu did some awesome stuff with sequins, so one if I did them one better and rocked out the rhinestones. So I got out my trusty Bedazzler and handy dandy glu gun (the thing is my BFF) and I WENT. TO. TOWN. Now who’s gonna rock tis town tonight? ME!!!”

In other news, leggings continue to reign in the fashion world and every season I like them better. Now they’re bejeweled, bespanglds, bedazzled, bestriped, beseamed, bespandexed, and bepatterned, (and beworn by, like, be-everyone):

Beseamed:

Bepatterned:

Bedazzled:

Be-everythinged:

Pretty cool, no? Wait a second there, you DID look at the shoes that are connected to those leggings, correct? Didn’t you? You didn’t? Well then REVIEW! They are most excellent.

Moving on, I’d like to open a category I’d like to call CRAMAZING  (crazy and amazing) footwear…

Actually, no, I have way too any photos. You’ll just have to come back tomorrow to check out the next installment of our Worldwide Fashion Week Wrap Up!

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Forever 21 has knockoffs of the Chanel Camellia Jellies I posted about before. What do you think?

FAKE:

REAL:

Unfortunately, we all know Forever can be a hellhole to navigate through. And then you have to pick through bins like this.

Forever has gotten into trouble before for imitating designer goods. They’ve been sued by everyone from DVF to Trovata to Gwen Stefani. Their claim that they attempt not to copy others’ goods is ridiculous when you see sandals like these. However, copyright infringement is a huge and controversial issue in the fashion industry. Here’s a post from the Copyright Office regarding fashion designs. I think the point is, people are jealous Forever’s making so much money. Other companies copy designs but aren’t this aggressively pursued.

If we do copyright designs, one of the concerns is that there will be a monopoly on things. What do you think about copyrighting a red sole? A certain Aztec or African or leopard design so no one else can use it? It’s my thought that the latter will never happen because it’s ridiculous and belongs to common intellectual property, but I could be wrong.

Sure, Forever is a pain to go to, a pain to stand in line for the cash registers and the dressing rooms for, and the clothes and accessories can be a bit … Hannah Montana. But I got sandals for $5, two adorable light summery dresses for $15 each, three strapless, underwireless padded bras for preventing high beams under summer dresses for $5 each and sexy black undies for $3 each! Friends asked me if my dress was from Club Monaco! Hah!

Recessionistaism 101: Pick your way through Forever and you can still have products that are cheap and will last you quite a while and have you looking fabulous!

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Hats have been making a slow resurgence over the past several years, much to my delight. I am a big aficianado of the lovely ladylikeness or saucy jauntiness of a hat, as well as its practicality (goodbye facial moles!) and ability to complete an outfit. There’s something so cool, so nonchalant and yet so look-at-me about a hat. I expect that as more and more people start to wear them, it won’t be so noticeable anymore to wear one. They will become a much more mainstream accessory, hopefully, and will be paired well with shoes.

Jennifer Aniston was recently photographed carrying a straw hat, Beyonce and Rihanna love to wear them, and many a celebrity from Sienna Miller to Leonardo DiCaprio is frequently seen enjoying the cool Havana ease of a straw hat. Most of the ladies sport the look with shorts or a shortsuit/onesie type outfit. But the question is, what kind of shoes do you wear with them?

The lovely Jennifer Aniston goes for neutral Weitzman wedges, a perfect answer, in my opinion. (Aside: I love Jennifer Aniston more and more as the years go by. She annoyed me on “Friends,” of course, but she is great now. I think that she is an inspiration to a world that tells you that the sexiness of a woman dies at 40. Yes, she has the body of a 20-year-old, but it’s more the way she carries herself. She’s so much more confident now, and it shows. It’s all I can do to hold back a “You go, girl! Who needs Brad Pitt when you’re cougaring every hottie in sight and doing better movies every day and running your own production company?”)

Be, never the tame one, pairs yellow spikes that have been surmised to be YSL (since we all know she hardly ever lets anything non-top notch designer touch her body) with her yellow hat.

Riri, resplendent in white and a printed patterned onesie short, goes for casual bejeweled sandals.

Cindy Crawford, still one of the sexiest ladies around, in my opinion, even more so for how well she’s aged, prefers a more cowboy style hat, at least for this ad. I think the cowboy style is a “Proceed With Caution.” If you are down South, or if you are on vacation, or at the beach, I think it is fine. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be caught dead in one, especially in New York. It nettles me that western style cowboy boots are in, AGAIN, this fall, when I have had to endure so many Williamsburg and downtown New York girls wearing them. It’s pretentious, in a word, to sport cowboy style when you are so obviously metropolitan.

This summer in New York, St. Marks, the street that is the arbiter of plebeian downtown New York fashion, where vendors hawk mainstream downtown fashion to NYU students and broke 20-somethings and 30-somethings, is loaded with straw hats right now. Go there for your bargain hats.

Here are a couple hats I bought on St. Marks.

This first smaller hat I bargained down to $11. (Pretend to walk away and you will get a much better deal).

This second hat was $18 (I bargained them down from $25).

The second hat curves nicely into a floppy brim when worn.

But what kind of outfits and shoes have I been wearing with these hats?

For the smaller hat: mostly a t-shirt, miniskirt and sandals or a big men’s shirt half unbuttoned with the cuffs rolled up, plimsolls or Keds and shorts.

For the larger hat: beachwear, a long buttoned loose white shirtdress with billowy sleeves, or a classic summer sundress in white, with wedges or cone stacked heels in soft gold or neutral colors. Do it up like this with simple black sandals for a more formal event.

For a dramatic floppy hat, you can do more with the other accessories than you can with a small hat. Work it on out with some shades, some artsy fartsy “ethnic” earrings and a white top like the sexy bohemian lady of our times, Kate Hudson.

For shoes, a great option would be straw-effect sandals as well, like these by milliner and shoe designer Eric Javits. I’m not a big fan of straw shoes, but man, do his look good!

Here are some of his lovely hats. I especially like the striped one on the right.

Here is Britney in one of Eric Javits’ hats. I bet you she’s wearing sandals, probably white and maybe with straw or bejeweled accents.

You want it to look like this with a straw hat. Effortless yet so chic. The shoes are a perfect match for the dress and hat, carrying the theme of yellow in the straw, black in the band of the hat and the base of the shoe. Gorgeous.

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I have been wear-testing the following ‘Very Volatile’ wedges for roughly the last month.

Volatile USA’s ‘Nobu’ ($74.99 @ volatileusa.com; the Nobu is also available at shoes.com, Zappos & Endless)

They are a great spring-summer sandal in one of this season’s more popular colors - turquoise. These also have an appealing organic design that really works with a spring wardrobe; particularly if you are like me and have a lot of cooler tones in your wardrobe.

These sandals are available in whole sizes 6-10 B US sizing (37-41 EU). Sizing was my first challenge. As a size 7.5 medium who prefers a lot of toe room, the choice on whether to try a 7 or 8 is the first challenge I encountered.   So, I actually tried a size 7 in the turquoise, and a size 8 in black suede.

The good news is that both sizes adjust fairly well in that the buckled slingback and suede material allow for a lot of fine-tuning and comfort on the initial fit. However, the size 7 had more than enough space to accommodate my anything-but narrow size 7.5 feet.  And, while sometimes slingbacks feel like the strap is about to slip off your ankle, these stayed secure through multiple wearings.

How comfortable are they? Well, they did have a brief breaking-in period of about 2-3 wearings of 2-5 hours each.  Each wearing was successively more comfortable than the last; there were no blisters thanks to the soft suede and roomy shape, but I did get a bit of a workout re-learning how to walk on a platform wedge; these have an almost 1″ lift under the toe and about a 4″ overall lift at the heel.  The footbed it lightly cushioned, and after several wearings, this padding started to form to the shape of my arch - an absolute necessity if you have a higher arch like I do.  If you are not ‘blessed’ with high arches, you may have little or no break-in period with these.

Here are some pictures of how these bamboo-wrapped wedges actually look on the foot:

(Yes, I need a pedicure - fast!)

The turquoise color really is fabulous!

You can see here that the size 7 in turquoise is definitely roomy enough for those of us who normally wear a 7.5. And, while it looks like my pinky toe is trying to escape, it never has. The straps and cutouts are placed perfectly to avoid that happening on my feet.

You can see in this next picture that the size 8 is super roomy. I would definitely think someone who is an 8-8.5 would have no problem with this size working for them.

(If you feel the need to put on your sunglasses to view these, I understand - I really am quite naturally pale.  My hubby has joked that since I don’t tan, I actually bleach in the sunlight. But, I digress).

If I have piqued your interest at all, you can find many other styles of  ‘Very Volatile’ shoes at volatileusa, zappos, endless, and shoes.com.

I have to admit, that although Volatile shoes are a well-known regional brand in the areas such as the Southeastern United States (A ‘go-to’ for wedges, flip-flops, and animal prints), I was unfamiliar with them before I stumbled across them several months ago.

As a brand, Volatile has competitive pricing, current styling, and reasonable comfort.  This is particularly remarkable in the current climate of ridiculously rising shoe prices. This makes Volatile shoes a nice value, particularly for ladies on a budget.

And, if you can get both comfort and style on a reasonable budget, I’m all for that.

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Galligator showed us a wonderful pair of shoes to celebrate Canada Day a couple of days ago.  I just found shoes that you can wear while celebrating July 4th.  

Star by Marc by Marc Jacobs $226 at Saks

Look at the back, there is a big star at the heel.  How much fun is that?

These shoes have all the components of a perfect shoe.   Ankle strap, 4 inch heel, patent leather, little more than peep toe and embelleshments.  I bet half the shoes in my closet have these same features.

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