The other night, Lisa VanderPump, the Kierkegaard of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, declared that: “Wearing flats is like a disease.”
Lisa favors Louboutin 6-inch stilettos, even while traipsing and sinking into the soft dirt of a vineyard. Now that’s the kind of fanatic commitment to style we fear and admire.
Rescue arrives in the form of parasitical houseguest and pathological liar Cedric, who volunteers to schlep Lisa on his back.
I guess that’s one way of paying rent.
Well, it’s a mitzvah to make a shidduch and Seraphic Secret would like to introduce Lisa V to Romanian shoe designer, whoops, shoe architect, Mihai Albu.
Prior to footwear design, Albu was an architect, and he has put his training to good use building civilization’s first 12-inch stiletto. Mihai Albu is the John Augustus Roebling of shoe design.
Albu’s creations are equal parts engineering and fashion. To achieve such heights, Albu stacks platform upon platform with decorative but functional braces holding together the multiple, er, levels.
In interviews, Albu has explained that, “Heels have an advantage because many women don’t have long legs. The heels reposition the waist. If a woman is 5 foot 9, she’d be towering above everyone if she wore these. I am creating a constructed chaos.”
You see, Mr. Albu is a one man NGO, empowering all you tiny—5 foot 9!—ladies.
The past few seasons have witnessed super models tumbling down runways like stalks of freshly cut wheat, victims of insanely high heels. It now seems likely that a whole new cast of casualties will grace ER’s in Paris, Milan and New York. We hope the nice physicians will also treat the rampant eating disorders that plague the well-paid but unfortunate young women.
I can, however, imagine a scenario where some courageous models will refuse—“The models are revolting!”—to risk life and limb for the sake of footwear, demanding the inalienable right to wear (Lisa V shudders) Audrey Hepburn style flats.
But it’s also likely that Lady Gaga and her admirers—Gagettes?—will, with Everest determination, risk the thin air of Albu heights.
In truth, the shoes are striking, beautiful in a deeply weird way, but I have a strong feeling that these very costly wearable works of art will end up on pedestals, lit with spotlights, their soles never scraping pavement.
Karen and I wish all our friends and relatives a down-to-earth and meaningful Shabbat.
Ariel Chaim Avrech, ZT'L, May His Righteous Memory be a Blessing.
18 Comments
LOL! True!
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Dr. Carol: If you wore Mr. Albu’s shoes, your feet would soon cease to be flat and commence to be vertical.
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The pharmacy clerk was very curious what I found so incredibly funny about a foot analyzer…
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I got new arch supports today from a Dr. Scholls machine at Walmart. The machine is supposed to use sensors to analyze foot problems, and you have to take your shoes off to use it. So I took my shoes off and stood on the platform and hit “Start.” Immediately the message popped up on the screen–”You must remove your shoes before using this machine.”
My feet are so flat the pressure contour map was pretty much just one color. Two big size 10 reasons why Audrey’s shoes are more my style.
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Watched Joan Rivers documentary. She has been riding in lemmos since I was 9. I found her reaction to the roast jokes interesting. She seems to be a very rich, driven, insecure woman.
I wonder where her manager disappears to ? He deserted her in a year where she was on her way back up.
She considers herself an actress who plays a comic.
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Why, by printing all these photographs of super-high heels, do you encourage your woman readers to wear them?
Robert’s women readers are adults, who make their own decisions regarding footwear and just about everything else. If they prefer style over comfort, that’s their choice to make.
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Pearl:
I’m pretty sure you have just described the reality of millions of footwear-loving women all over the globe.
Which is precisely why Friday Footwear gets more hits than any of our other posts.
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Miranda:
1. I like to write about fashion.
2. These shoes are making waves in the fashion world.
3. If you think I’m encouraging women to wear these shoes, when I explicitly state otherwise, well, what we here is a failure to communicate.
4. And it’s not on my end.
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Kent:
Yup, Forbidden Planet is a great film and RIP Anne Francis, September 16, 1930 – January 2, 2011, it was the role for which she will be best remembered.
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Kathleen:
Death on heels, indeed. That’s what some women said about Louboutin’s six inch heels when they first came out and now they are a fashion must.
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Franny:
I hear you and I’m preparing the next family footwear edition.
Karen was so cute in her little clogs. I was, of course, smitten.
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Bill:
I think Lisa V does do her gardening in Louboutins.
Audrey H was stylish without being a slave to fashion.
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I think the motto behind all those “killer heels” you display should be: “Onwards & Upwards”! (and then the shoe wearer can go home, take off the shoes, curse a few times, soak her feet in epsom salts, and the next day do it all over again.)
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Dear Robert: Shavuah Tov. Tu B’shvat samaech. You yourself admit that these shoes are dangerous; a woman could break her ankle. Also, they’re expensive to keep in repair, always breaking and you have to pay the shoemaker to fix them, I NEVER wore heels higher than four inches, and I stopped wearing THEM, except for on a few special occasions, DECADES AGO. I was sick of representing the margin of profit for Cat’s Paw Soles&Heels. Why, by printing all these photographs of super-high heels, do you encourage your woman readers to wear them?
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Forbidden Planet: A real science fiction classic.
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Ah yes, death on heels — what we have all been waiting for!
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Hi, Robert,
I still prefer seeing the pics of the shoes your wife and daughters sport: classy, and wearable!
I am a vertically challenged 5’1″, but I’ve never gone for the “killer heels”. I’m an urbanite-and I like to walk.
Just think: if Karen was wearing stilettos instead of cute clogs on that fateful day….she may have gone home early with sore feet, and you might never have reconnected!
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Now that is something I’d like to see – Lisa in stilettos, on her knees with a trowel doing the gardening.
Some men go crazy over stilettos – but I have never seen Audrey Hepburn badly dressed – flats included.
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