Finding your FEET! “My mama always said, life is like a box of chocolates, ya never know what you’re gonna get!” The same could be said about shoes! Every season, designers choose to change the statement shoe. Of course you get staples that are always in fashion, like stiletto pumps and there is always a boot of choice floating around the vast shoe ocean. While some people refuse to wear a high heel for any occasion except possibly the work Christmas Party, you also get those who hate to be caught, “flat-footed”! Personally, I like to class myself as a bit of both. I see the good in both styles of shoe, and they both have merits for different occasions! Though, I must admit, I did not always think this way... I am a petite woman of just 4’11. Therefore it probably doesn’t come as a great surprise for me to tell you that I use to be a complete heel-a-holic; the higher the heel, the better. A heel was able to transport me from the dwarfed height I so often found myself in, to a world where all of a sudden, I could look people straight in the eye – neck-ache was indeed a thing of the past. A heel has the power to improve a woman’s posture and make those legs look so much longer, and although your feet may be covered in blisters at the end of the day, “there is no beauty without pain” so they say. A few years ago, I was studying at a top UK drama school in London, when the unthinkable happened. My back gave in. I was unceremoniously thrown into a world that consisted of nothing but a bed and a pair of dreaded flat shoes. Could anything be any worse?! I physically lost the ability to walk in my muchloved and favoured heels, gone was the facade of height and suddenly everywhere I went I felt dwarfed by the rest of the world and was constantly subjected to, “WOW Kerry, have you shrunk? I never realised you were SO short”. While I like to think of it as petite rather than short, every time someone uttered these words, it was like a knife in the chest; of course helped by my much taller friends continuing to wear massive stilts so that I felt EVEN shorter than I already was! Needless to say that while a heel had the power of height perception and illusion, the heel-less shoe was the evil force able to plummet me straight back to earth. Welcome back ever hated neck-ache and a reminder of just how small I really am. SO...You can just imagine my utmost delight to discover that this season the uber-heel has given way to the much more ladylike and practical heel. The platforms and 8inch heels are gone and in their place, a much more modest heel of just a couple of inches. This season, the shoe is a return to practicality. With the new, “New Look” return to ladylike fashions the shoe is more a colour on the palette to help create the perfect watercolour painting, rather than the glitter to steal the limelight away from the rest of the picture.
So this season when you are looking for the perfect pair of shoes to see you through the winter, don’t forget to look at the ladylike styles and the heritage styles and the welcome timberland-style boots. Think PRACTICAL this season – the shoe is no longer the pain-in-the-feet that it has been in the past; it is now your FRIEND! I am Kerry-Louise Barnaby Guest Writer