I have discovered that for once I am near the forefront of fashion, or at least ahead of the Guardian's fashion pages. I don't look at those so often since the reliably entertaining and caustic Hadley Freeman went on maternity leave, so it took me a few days to notice the article Snow business: how weather proof boots went high fashion. Celebrities have finally embraced the notion of wearing outdoor shoes that don't leak, specifically the Sorel brand. Cue much cardunculus smugness, who bought a pair of Sorels, specifically some 'shorter and more subtle' ones, that are now being worn 'all day and in the city by celebrities and street-style stars'. Blimey.
Admittedly I only heard of Sorel because they were mentioned in a newspaper article about weatherproof footwear, quite possibly in the Guardian. I checked their website and while some of the boots looked too much as though I'd come in from the ski slopes or just put my chainsaw down for a minute, some were subfusc enough that I could imagine wearing them in the West End. And buying winter boots by mail order is easier than it would be to buy court shoes or sandals, because you are going to wear them with socks anyway, so you can adjust the final fit to the last couple of millimetres by choosing socks of the right thickness.
It is a long-standing gripe of mine that so many women's shoes are designed and manufactured on the basis that women do not need to walk any further than the totter up the red carpet from the taxi to the dining table. It annoyed me that when I worked in an office I ended up having to wear court shoes, because that was what looked the part with the suit or the tailored dress, and that however carefully I chose them the ruddy things gave me corns. The day I ceased working in an office and never wore court shoes again except to rare formal functions like weddings, I ceased to have corns. I rest my case, it was the shoes.
I would sometimes ask the Systems Administrator, or male friends and colleagues I knew well enough to have that sort of conversation, how far they could walk in their shoes before their feet hurt. Or got blisters, or bled. They would look at me oddly. Apparently men can walk around in their everyday office shoes all day and not get sore feet. And how much did it have to rain before their shoes leaked? Most women's shoes leak as soon as it rains. Even brands like Clarks that I thought of as sensible to the point of dullness (apart from their desert boots, which are classics) put disclaimers on most of their shoes that they were not guaranteed weatherproof.
The thing is, in the UK it rains quite a lot. It rains even on days when it is not forecast to rain. And most of us do not travel door to door by limousine, and some of us even enjoy walking. London is a great world city, and one of the finest ways to see it is on foot. Liverpool Street to Trafalgar Square takes about three quarters of an hour, and gets you a lot closer to your ten thousand steps than taking the bus, but it is no fun in wet feet. I made this mistake the last time I went to London, when it was not forecast to rain and I did not wear the Sorels.
I had independent endorsement for the Sorels during our holiday, as I stood in a car park feeding change into the ticket machine, and the woman behind me in the queue said that she liked my boots. I thanked her, and told her the brand name. Sorel, I said, they are Canadian. You can buy them by mail order. And now they have been endorsed in the Guardian as well as the Blandford Forum public car park. I'm on a fashion roll.
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