Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Man, sometimes I'm so fashion forward I scare myself. So it seems that the world and its auntie is in a tizzy over Victoria Beckham and her heelless boots. Um, hello! Some of us were working that look a year ago. And by "working it", I mean "slipped them on backstage for five minutes" but still, they graced my feet before Lady B's.
A bit of context: exactly a year ago this week, designer Antonio Berardi first brought out his heelless shoes at his show in Paris. Models have fallen down in shows before - Naomi Campbell when modelling for Vivienne Westwood most famously, and more went down, domino-style, in the recent Prada show - but never before had it seemed as though that was the designer's intention.
That the catwalk was concrete added an extra element of anxiety. Yet the models remained steady on their feet. Some even looked almost comfortable. Suddenly, a whole new world of accessory possibilities opened up: heelless shoes! How had I never noticed this gaping hole in my wardrobe?
So afterwards I ran backstage, gave the requisite absolutely-fabulous-darling-mwah-mwah-you're-a-genius to the designer, grabbed those shoes in my meaty paws and shoved them on. And here's the extraordinary thing: they were actually really easy to walk in, and I tell you this as someone who feels precarious whenever she has to swap her ballet pumps for, well, anything. I think the trick is that the shoes are extremely heavy, because they are deliberately weighted in the platform base under the toe. This means that all your weight is forced forwards and then downwards, so you literally cannot tip backwards and there isn't any of that teeter-totter nonsense you get with normal heels.
Shoes have been getting increasingly extreme in the past two years as designers have realised customers are more willing to fork out on accessories than clothes. The rise and rise (literally) of shoes also explains the popularity of the platform, allowing wearers to hoik themselves up an extra 5cms on top of their 12cms heels. So perhaps heelless shoes were the inevitable next frontier in the never-ending quest by designers to re-invent the wheel and then flog it back to customers.
So popular were Berardi's shoes that the next season he made them as boots, which is what my bandwagon-jumper, Victoria, wore this weekend.
One nil to me. But our chiropractors will probably come out on top in the end.
