Heels and toes key to summer fashions

Jul 7 2008 By Sarah Evans

The best you can say about men’s fashion is that it is very boring.

Even the occasional male fashion supplements, or pages in female magazines that half-heartedly attempt to engage women in their partner’s ensembles, only manage to come up with an odd coloured shirt or two and perhaps, in summer, trousers than finish below the knee.

The range of colours and styles are still pitiful and reflect what a small distance men have travelled in the field of applied arts.

Why half of the human race insists on wearing collars and ties, that cut the neck, that elegant pedestal for the face, in half, is beyond me.

But at least men are not beset by daily and seasonal traps.

Summer always brings its own fashion dilemmas for women, some recurrent and some to do with the season’s fashion trends.

There is always the decision to be made about how curtain-fabric to go. Something about summer makes everyone from fashion designers down, think flowers.

If you are swathed in pink roses, it somehow makes the sheeting rain seem less important and the holidays seem closer.

So July is welcomed in by large numbers of females donning clothes, the fabrics of which should be hanging at their windows.

It is a strong woman who keeps her nerve and stays plain and neutral, a steely determination rarely acquired by anyone under 40.

Shoes are another summer issue that cannot be dodged, as in winter, by wearing boots and hiding under warm trousers.

There are two distinct shoe trends this summer, both of which show the political and moral niceties women have to negotiate on a daily basis.

Heels are worn high, high, high this season. And thin.

It is a wonderfully elegant look, elongating the shortest leg and the individual shoes are works of art.

Beautiful shoes are so rewarding for the wearer because unlike most clothing, the wearer can enjoy the complete effect, themselves.

Many a crisis at work, many a dispiriting piece of news can be alleviated by glancing down and enjoying for a moment that perfect artifact that is the high-heeled shoe.

There is, however, no getting away from the fact that even with many years of practice (to which I personally can testify) high heels set physical limitations on the wearer and thus have been under feminist attack for centuries.

It is not so much that you can’t run for the bus – not something that high heel wearers would be likely to have up there on their daily musts – as that, it has to be admitted, you can’t really get anywhere rapidly, least of all up stairs, an enterprise that requires considerable expertise, if you are not to bend forward as though in your dotage.

So a balance has to be struck.

If your time managements skills are sadly wanting, you may have to accept kitten heel days and go for your female politician look, or you may want to take a tight grip on your diary and allow yourself the extra inches.

The second shoe trend is, in my view, an unmitigated disaster. The gladiator sandal has been around before but not as such a prominent fashion statement as this year.

It is found largely in black, is completely flat, (very acceptable, quite properly, to your right-minded feminist) but has endless straps including heavy ones round the ankles.

It therefore has strong political overtones of bondage and slavery.

As if that weren’t enough, it cuts the leg in the most unfortunate way, so unless you have giraffe legs, you lose the length and elegance that signifies the body beautiful.

Sandals naturally require a word about toenails.

To wear sandals without neatly pedicured, polished and preferable varnished nails suggests things have unfortunately got on top of you and you need a few days in a darkened room.

Or that you are a man. The less said about male toenails and indeed toes, the better.

There must be something about testosterone that stops men ever looking down.

The gnarled, discoloured, jagged sight that would meet their eyes must explain the attraction of socks, another fashion disaster.

Deck shoes or mules are really the only answer for male holiday wear.

And how boring is that?