Mismatched shoes going mainstream?

[The_Princess_of_Bozonia]

Looks like clowns are the new fashion trendsetters. The mind boggles:

Something asymmetrical is afoot in European shoe wear
By Syl Tang, Financial Times
January 29, 2007

A new fashion trend is making great strides in Europe: wearing two completely different shoes.

Style experts say wearing mismatched shoes, something cutting edge shoe designers have experimented with for at least two decades, is entering the mainstream.

A new Italian tourist brochure, for example, features fashionistas in Rome wearing a red suede mule and a green patent pump, and a boot and a dress shoe in matching brocade.

"What rule says the right has to be the same as the left shoe?" asks Dalia Saliamonas, the marketing director of Spanish shoemaker Camper. "It's a game: Each pair, each side can have its own personality like a couple in a marriage."

One of the label's creations features a map split across two shoes, with one shoe showing an arrow marked "estoy aqui" (I am here). Another pair has a properly laced shoe, while the other has laces askew.

In fact, the non-matching pairs constitute a line in themselves — Twins. The series has not only sold better and better but become more and more avant-garde in look, the company says. The trend isn't just catching on in Italy, a country that takes its shoes more seriously than most. According to Paloma Marugan, director of the consumer product department of Spain's trade commission, asymmetrical pairs have been popular in the country's youth market for a while.

Marugan thinks consumers are drawn to asymmetry for the imperfection it mirrors in themselves.

"I think this is a very refreshing idea that has been very successful in Europe because it somehow took us all away from a very 'uniform' world and into a more human one that reminds us all that we human beings are not exactly symmetrical, and that honoring that is healthy and fun."

Meanwhile, at prices directed more at grown-ups than the youth market, artist Mihara Yasuhiro has done a series featuring two completely different shoes for Converse. Famously conservative Stubbs & Wootton — a favorite label of the golf and yacht club set — offers loafers with different tops for the right and the left.

According to Commedes Garçons, themselves experts in mixing it up, designers have a natural affinity for asymmetry. A representative for Dover Street Market, Rei Kawakubo's London store, says the look is rampant among all lines stocked: "This season, all is a mix. Trousers with skirts, dresses with suit jackets, and so forth."

At the end of the day, though, the question with mismatched shoes is not whether designers love making them but whether people will love wearing them.

Meghan Cleary, a shoe blogger and author of "The Perfect Fit," says someone who is intentionally wearing mismatched items is clearly not beholden to regular style rules.

"When you get dressed, it's about the silhouette, about the lines and the way it drapes on your body," she said. "It takes someone who really knows fashion to turn it on its head. It takes a courageous fashion person because you have to know the silhouette before you start to take away sections of the silhouette."

Erin Conroy, a spokeswoman for Brown Shoe, maker of Via Spiga, Franco Sarto and Naturalizer, thinks the trend will sell, albeit in a limited way.

"The retailers and designers do a terrific job of keeping consumers aware of the trends each season, and individual expression is still very much a trend. [Mismatched shoes] is one that is incredibly individualistic. It definitely appeals to women trying to express themselves."

But Conroy has some skepticism. "Trends that are the longest lasting are those that are open to interpretation by different people in many different ways. The 1960s mod trend is a good example. It will be interesting to see how long this one can last.

"There are only so many different ways you can interpret mismatched shoes."

[tim]

Looks like I'm going to have to start wearing clown socks on my arms to be "different".

[saphireSue]

should make for some funny walks, 3 inch heel. flat tennis shoe. mmm

[Gladman]

Ms. Saphire, You made me fall off my chair with my feet straight up and I got bopped on my nose with my shoe. I'll recover.
Glad

[Jitterbug]

Well, if I wore two different shoes, I might upset this "silhouette" I've already got going on! And I wouldn't want to mess that up! It looks like alfred hitchcock from the side--I kinda like it that way! LOL
Jitter