Fashion Afoot

1996–1997

• Geelong Art Gallery, VIC
  9 February 1996 - 17 March 1996
• Port Pirie Regional Gallery, SA
  28 March 1996 - 21 April 1996
• New Land Gallery, SA
  19 May 1996 - 16 June 1996
• Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, NT
  28 June 1996 - 28 July 1996
• Cairns Regional Gallery, QLD
  9 August 1996 - 15 September 1996
• New England Regional Art Museum, NSW
  4 October 1996 - 3 November 1996
• Benalla Art Gallery, VIC
  15 November 1996 - 15 December 1996
• Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, TAS
  20 December 1996 - 3 February 1997

Revival of The Fittest: Contemporary Shoes

Since the early 1980s, fashion revivals have come and gone at a rapid pace. But with each renewal comes a variation on style or form — a change of materials, a subtle shift in shape, a difference in detail or cut. Almost every shoe we see today has an element of the past embedded in its structure or detail. In this exhibition of works produced over the past decade, it is possible to discern traces of the long and varied history of art, design and footwear itself. It is as if in order to move ahead, designers must sometimes step into the past.

Vestiges of one of the oldest forms of footwear, the Gillie, can be found in the work of Jean Paul Gaultier and Stephane Kélian, Vivienne Westwood and Philippe Model. The Gillie, which predates Roman times and takes its name from the attendant to a Scottish Highland shoot, is common to many cultures throughout Europe. It is characterised by the separate facings for each lace and eyelet, which can be looped or not according to the fashion (Wilson 1969, p. 7). Gaultier and Kélian's Gillie shoe is closely related to the shoes worn by present-day Scottish Highland dancers. By contrast, the only traditional aspect of Westwood's plaid silk version is the form of lacing. The same applies to Philippe Model's ankle boots with their contrasting gold leather detail. Model's boots, in fact, have more in common with Roman officer's sandals, known as calige. It is said that the Roman emperor Caligula was so-called by his soldiers because of his preference for these sandals (McDowell 1989, p. 53). In Roman times, the fronts of sandals were often adorned with insignia or other forms of personal decoration. Similarly, Tokio Kumagai's sandals bear an African mask.

The shape of John Fluevog's Swordfish shoe, with its high-cut vamp, raised back and long, pointed toe, declares an affinity to the footwear of the Normans, who conquered Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Even the stuffed toe of the Swordfish shoe has similarities to the scorpion tail and ram horn toe shapes of medieval footwear. Fluevog's modern interpretation is rendered afresh due to its dramatic heel and use of buckles; neither were available to the Normans who had to slip their shoes into high wooden overshoes, or pattens, in order to venture outdoors. At times these medieval pattens were carved with a arch giving the appearance of two separate heels on the one foot.

Philippe Model's shoes with 'Chinese' block heels, made as an accessory for the collection of Paris designer, Martine Sitbon, create a similar effect. Although the soles of Philippe Model's shoes are reminiscent of the traditional raised wooden sandals of Japan, known as geta, or the Middle Eastern kub-kob.

The introduction of the heeled shoe, in the early seventeenth century, is a development traced in two works by Patrick Cox. His high-cut, purple suede pair recall the simplicity of the earliest heeled shoes worn in Elizabethan England. Whether or not Cox's 'broken' heel was inspired by those early experiments from the period, the concept has allowed him to create a novel shape. The details of Cox's black ponyskin pair, with their latchet-tie, high tab, seamed front and square toe, were all common aspects of European footwear through to the eighteenth century.

The heeled mule, or backless slipper, was worn by both sexes in the eighteenth century. Manolo Blahnik's Boucher, however, refers unmistakably to the fashionable images of women depicted in Francois Boucher's canvases. This kid suede mule with rolled tab, lined with silk and set upon a Louis heel, evokes the sense of a Parisian boudoir, adorned with elaborate upholstery and heavy, silk drapes. The sensuous Louis heels of Blahnik's Boucher and Giacinto live up to their origins by recreating the highly refined curves of French Rococo furniture, while the distinctive heels of Christian Louboutin's Smoking could be successfully transposed onto those of any bureau, console or table from the period. Blahnik's Giacinto, with its delicate silk covering and jewelled embroidery, emerges out of Rococo fashion as does the Harlequinesque covering of his Mucato boots.

The style of Christian Lacroix's embroidered boots, which were designed to complement his Autumn—Winter 1992-93 collection, is a descendant of the high, fitted boots worn from the 1870s through to the end of the century. Although they were often highly ornamented, earlier models are not likely to have carried the same exuberant decoration that is Lacroix's trademark.

John Fluevog's Derby clogs recall the sturdy simplicity of English mill clogs first worn by child workers during the Industrial Revolution. Like many aspects of men's dress since the nineteenth century, the Derby shoe has survived with relatively little change. In fact, Christopher Nemeth has done little to alter the details of this classic style, although much to distort its structure. In a gesture inspired by the way in which well-worn shoes inevitably seem to curl, Nemeth has lengthened the toes and tilted them upwards. Nemeth's Derby boots, decorated in the designer's 'linen weave' print, are distinguished b changes in the proportion of the breadth of the toes.

Diversity is the key word when describing shoe fashions of the twentieth century. In many ways, the shoe designed in the first five or six decades of this century provided a vast canon for shoemakers to work with thereafter. The perfection of the shoemaker's last is a common goal, fundamental to the pioneering work of earlier designers such a Pietro Yantourny, Salvatore Ferragamo and Roge Vivier. Manolo Blahnik's shoes share an equine quality with Yantourney's designs, like that of well bred race horse. Ferragamo's use of novel materials such as clear plastic, vinyl, nylon and mica to create delicately strapped sandals in the 1950s has its modern-day equivalent in Rodolphe Menudier's sling-backs, galvanised copper heels and plastic vamps. The narrow last of Donna May Bolinger’s court shoes are reminiscent of the sleek uppers of Ferragamo's which Elsa Schiaparelli used to great shoes from the late 1920s and early 1930s. However, the gently arched, three-cornered, clear acrylic heels which dramatically off-set Bolinger's design are resolutely of her own making.

The work of Frenchman Roger Vivier has inspired designers since the 1950s. Vivier is responsible for introducing more innovative toe and heel shapes than any other shoemaker, and continues to design shoes today His shoes have an incomparable lightness and aerodynamic quality. The forked toe shape of Patrick Cox's 'broken heel' shoe owes much to Vivier's pioneering work. Michel Perry, a designer known for his strong interest in heel shapes, has produced two new variations on the set-back heel, which Vivier developed between 1958 and 1960. The heels of Perry's sling-back strap shoes and platform mules offer a broader and flatter shape to that of Vivier's, while the continuation of the mule's squared-off heel into a platform of identical proportions creates a new form altogether.

It is an interesting exercise to trace the elements of a design such as Sidonie Larizzi's black moiré shoes, made for Christian Lacroix. It appears to have several precedents including a closely related heel by Philippe Model, the scalloped uppers of Middle Eastern footwear as well as an exotically curved last developed by Vivier —all of which combine to produce a shoe of extraordinary vitality.

In the 1980s, quirky accessories and detailing became fashionable. Hats mimicking pastries or costume jewellery masquerading as domestic hardware were with indicative of this playful mood to which Tokio Kumagai was an important contributor. Adopting the trompe l'oei/ (or illusionism) principle,which Elsa Schiaperelli used to great effect in the late 1930s to create her Surrealist-inspired designs, Kumagai's. 'fantasy' shoes draw on subjects such as motorcars, animals and fruit, as well as early African and modern European art. The skill with which Kumagai transforms the simple strap shoe, itself a form developed in the early years of the century, belies a sophisticated eye. A strap, when placed diagonally over the instep, lends credibility to the illusion of a crooning swan while in another work the animated face of a storybook mouse is conjured through careful detailing. Even the 'grapes' of a sandal are individually padded for the right effect. Kumagai's attention to inventive detail was not confined to his fantasy designs. His use of the Japanese envelope fastening as a closure is an ingenious addition to modern shoe design. The influence of Surrealism on fashion, first felt during the 1930s, continues today. The X-rayed foot of Donna May Bolinger's skeleton boots, which reveal not only the bones but also the nails projecting through the sole, is confused with the wearer's foot within. Christian Louboutin's Pensée shoes are raised on 'Zoo' heels with pawlike terminations. Martin Margiela's re-use of the traditional sock-boots worn by Japanese carpenters and their transformation into a pair of high-heeled boots with bifurcated toes a approximates the dislocating effect of Surrealist imagery. Although familiar within their original context these boots, which were dubbed by the fashion press as 'pigs-trotter' boots, possess a slightly menacing quality.

Gabrielle Chanel's two-tone sling-back shoes, like her classic navy and white suits, have enjoyed many reincarnations since their inception in the late 1950s. Michel Perry's bone and black slingback pair is another variant proving the enduring nature of Chanel's formula, which was itself based on the co-respondent or spectator shoe popularised by the Prince of Wales in the 1920s. The stiletto heel which emerged in early to mid 1950s, has undergone revivals during the 1970s, 1980s and more recently. The skeleton image printed on the boots by Donna May Bolinger ironically draws attention to the wearer’s own predicament and refers to the vexed question of whether women should wear high heels at all. Vivienne Westwood has answered that most eloquently in her collections over the past few years with very tall, platform shoes such as the plaid silk-covered Gillie or the stiletto-heeled, flower-print strap shoe.

The platform and wedge-soled shoe originated in the 1930s, with some antecedent in the medieval Venetian chopine, or platform overshoe. However, Westwood's stiletto shoe, with its long, dagger-like heel and concealed platform, is reminiscent of footwear seen in the fetish magazines which enjoyed a certain popularity in the the 1950s (Trasko 1989, p. 74). Westwood's more recent shoe design, created for her Autumn—Winter 1995—96 collection, discards the stiletto heel in favour of a very high, thick heel set half-way along the arch. This style bears some resemblance to the substantial heels of seventeenth century Europe, as well as to the tilted, wedged slippers designed for the bound feet of feudal China that were euphemistically named Lily feet.

Fashions from the 1960s have already undergone a number of revivals over the past decade. The title of Christian Louboutin's Smoking mules, comes from the abbreviated French term for men's formal evening dress but it may equally refer to Yves Saint Laurent's influential adaptation of this male convention for women's fashion in the late 1960s. Both designers' works exploit the tension between formal elegance and sensuality. Sixties' 'Space Age' fashions are a recurring fascination for designers and image-makers. Metallised fabrics and plastics were crucial to this look, which has since been reassembled in Karl Lagerfeld's clear, plastic knee boots designed as an accessory for his own signature Autumn-Winter 1994-95 collection, which emphasised body consciousness.

Many of the images seen in Pop art works were absorbed into fashion during the 1960s. Sportscars were a common Pop art subject and Katherine Denzinger's sportscar shoe of 1965 for Herbert Levine (Trasko 1989, p. 97) is an interesting precursor to Tokio Kumagai's Motorcar shoes from 1984. Andy Warhol's screen-printed flower paintings are the inspiration for a series of shoes by Christian Louboutin and it was possibly Warhol's paintings of Campbell's soup cans that prompted Louboutin to cover heels with beer cans.

The practice of sceenprinting photographic images onto cloth in the 1960s is revived in Donna May Bolinger's 'Submersion' print series, adding a note of glamour to the legs of her sandal boots. Glib slogans were often a favourite device of Pop artists and Louboutin has adopted their use with great skill in his 'Inseparables' series. These works have letters applied over the vamps which spell a word when the shoes are brought together, for example the Love shoes.

John Fluevog's Shirley Gibson platforms are as much a nostalgic revival of the multicoloured platforms of the late 1960s and early 1970s — generally designed for men — as they are of that era's taste for colourfully patched clothing. The exaggeration of the flared heel, in particular, strikes a note of parody, which itself has been a recent fashion. Fluevog's shoes reflect an underground club fashion popularised by performers such as Lady Miss Kier from the FunkHouse band, Deee-Lite, for whom Fluevog designed shoes.

Whereas clothes designers have considerable scope to experiment with shape and cut, the discipline of fit and wearability confines shoe designers to a more limited range. Given these limitations, it is surprising that so much variation and imagination is possible. Fashion's recycling of ideas appeals to our desire for nostalgia, and with inspiration and skill, the practice of revision need not lead to repetition. The works in this exhibition are indebted to the history of fashion, yet they express a fresh interpretation and, at times, inventiveness that might in turn inspire designers of the future.

Roger Leong

International Art, National Gallery of Australia