One Shoe, Two Shoes, Red Shoes, Blue Shoes
The intrinsic place of fashion in our cultural landscape
Every so often I’m lured into watching a movie for no other reason than its catchy title.
In the 2022 film, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, the Cinderella trope is turned on its head. There is no prince and no fancy ball, just a hard-working British housekeeper with spunk and a lot of heart who falls in love with a Christian Dior dress she sees in the wardrobe of one of her employers. This employer, a woman who reeks of privilege at its worst, could be a variant of any evil stepmother.
Why a working-class woman becomes determined to get herself a Christian Dior dress speaks volumes about the ways in which our culture feeds desire.
It’s post-war London, 1957. Ada Harris has only just learned that her husband was killed (no longer missing) in action during the war. She understands what it means to a woman of a certain age, invisible.
At the same time, her desire touches on the intrinsic place of fashion in our cultural landscape, especially on the couture level — something made even more manifest in the captivating Apple TV series, “The New Look.”
The series moves from Nazi-occupied Paris to the post-war years. Once again, Christian Dior gets pride of place. While Coco Chanel would gain notoriety as a Nazi collaborator, Dior, a rising star, would suffer from not knowing the fate of his sister, in a concentration camp for her activity in the French resistance.
Parisians were hungry for something to revive their spirit — and Dior, once his own spirit is revived by the return of his sister, would become the darling of post-war Paris couture, with his daring designs.
Which brings me to another designer, first name Christian, who is said to have come up with the idea for his now iconic red-soled shoes after watching his assistant paint her nails with red Chanel polish.
Voila! More than 30 years after that first collection was spawned, the Louboutin look remains de rigueur. Celebrity status aside, it’s a telling statement of shoes as art, not to mention their sex appeal and cultural manifestation.
Shoes tell stories, and there’s no Cinderella tale without the reminder of a pair of shoes. The same could be said of another fabled young heroine who can’t seem to free herself from ruby red slippers that shine and sparkle.
My daughter, when she was a little girl, had a costume pair of the shoes Dorothy wore in “The Wizard of Oz.” A grown woman now and a writer herself, she makes the astute observation in an essay she once wrote that “The overriding symbol of these shoes in film and literature seems to be power.”
Never mind what the medical profession has to say about high heels, once Roger Vivier introduced his Aiguille (stiletto) heel 65 years ago, it became the ultimate power heel. Stilettos make for a sexy stance. Take a peek at any episode of the Netflix series, “Suits,” and you’ll see women wearing outfits they look poured into and strutting about the office in stilettos. I marvel at their grace.
From an evolutionary standpoint, height was an advantage in extending the reach of female hunter-gatherers. From a psychological standpoint, it boosts sense of self, both for women and men.
For European aristocrats in the 17th century, heels became a symbol of virility and military prowess. But the credit for designing shoes with heels goes to Persian horse soldiers who figured out a clever way to keep their feet in stirrups. Just think how much the modern cowboy boot owes its design to 10th century Persian soldiers.
Louis XIV made a defining statement with the red block heels he sported. A color associated with wealth and power, only chosen nobles were allowed to wear red heels. As heels took hold in women’s fashion, they were less chunky than their male variety. In time men would start to see the heel as too feminine and return to a more flat-footed look.
When it comes to footwear, there exists a subculture around being a ‘shoe person’ (whatever that really means). Either it’s a camp you take pride in belonging to or you dismiss it as reeking of frivolousness. When the infamous First Lady Imelda Marcos fled the Philippines in 1986 with her deposed dictator/husband Ferdinand, it was her lavish shoe collection, estimated to be in the thousands, that captured headlines.
In “The Shoe in Art, the Shoe as Art,” one of the many wonderful essays in Footnotes: On Shoes, researcher/writer Janice West posits, “the possession of all those shoes at one time (we all wear and wear out many pairs of shoes in a lifetime) gave her collection character beyond consumption.”
West also points to artists like Andy Warhol and Jim Dine, who used shoes as subjects for their art and makes an equivalence between fashion and art in the twenty-first century. Artists of modern life embrace fashion because they see its symbolic significance as well as its social and cultural manifestations.
Consider this: The 2011 exhibition, “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty,” drew more than 660,000 visitors to New York’s Metropolitan Museum in three months. It was a truly spectacular show paying homage to the iconic McQueen, who revolutionized fashion with his bold, innovative, theatrical designs before he took his life at age 40. I still wear my souvenir tee shirt, and the exhibition’s blockbuster status placed it in the ranks of Mona Lisa (1963) and Treasures of Tutankhamun (1978.)
“Can’t wait to see your beautiful face (and shoes),” a friend texts me in anticipation of a visit to California. Other friends can’t help but pay attention to the shoes I’m wearing when we get together.
Does a shoe as cover art for my short story collection render me a shoe person?
Many people apparently think so and it makes me smile — even if I see myself more in terms of a shoes-as-metaphor person. One who resists the trivialization of cultural symbols associated with femaleness. Not that I don’t appreciate and have my share of designer footwear.
Think about what it means to put yourself in someone else’s shoes.
Or read what is considered a classic piece of flash fiction at its briefest:
“For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn.”
Turns out to be an urban legend that Hemingway wrote it. But don’t these six words pack a punch?
And didn’t I say shoes tell stories? So do the clothes we wear. In a gem of a book by Ilene Beckerman, Love, Loss, and What I Wore, the story of a woman’s life is intimately told via her words and lovely illustrations. Nora and Delia Ephron would turn it into an off-Broadway play. Of course I saw it.
All of which brings me back to a British housekeeper looking radiant in a red Christian Dior gown (paired with perfect shoes) — not to mention the timing of Apple TV’s “The New Look” just when many of us are finally moving on from our athleisure pandemic look.
Best of all, it conjures a lingering picture of my own daughter, very young, clomping around in a pair of my shoes. Most children do this, boys as well as girls.
Daddy’s shoes are not nearly as appealing.
Do you have an intercultural story or experience you want to share? We would love to hear it! Contribute to A-Culturated and join the community!
Author of JUST LIKE FEBRUARY, a novel (Spark Press), SHOES HAIR NAILS, short stories (Uccelli Press), and BECAUSE MY NAME IS MOTHER, essays.
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