Big Ugly Shoes

There has been a real epidemic lately of big ugly shoes. While previously the dainty pointy toe and spindly stiletto a la Manolo Blahnik was hot, now everybody has to have something towering and full of buckles and basically resembling a medieval torture device.

I actually love a large and chunky shoe- I prefer wedges to high heels both in terms of shape and comfort- high heels often look like an absence of shoe to me, and who wants that? And I love stuff with crap allover it- these, for instance, are pretty fab.

But these new shoes are just aggressively ugly. What's worse, you're supposed to wear them with three pairs of scrunch socks and two pairs of tights and some horrible sack of a dress in black, brown, gray, or perhaps grayish brown if you're feeling nuts. They're supposed to be another bumpy neutral layer in the series of them cascading down your body- very Marc Jacobs fall o7!

At least if they were all worn with, I don't know, jungle print mini dresses or what Tina Turner wore in the Mad Max sequel, they would make sense, in an apocalyptic/fierce type of way.

The Sartorialist always features women who wear muted sacks and these types of nine million dollar shoes, and the woman above is really rocking the look, complete with the sloppy scrunched pants, retarded hat, multiple scarves (what is it with people and scarves these days?) and dreary color scheme. It looks like she emerged from a pile of rags.

The lady on the right is also working the million dollar dreary hobo style. Can you imagine picking this woman out of a crowd to photograph her outfit? What exactly is the draw here? Maybe it's the overwhelming zest, passion and creativity that practically leaps out of the photo.

Aren't you just dying to pair these Gaultiers with something baggy and woolen?

Here are some more of them in action. The woman with the ski hat is really looking like a consummate fashion victim to me, where everything is clearly designer but somehow looks cheap and fails to play off each other. The black stuff is supposed to look all 80's dominatrix, the coat is like 60's shearling style with racing stripes, and the hat is just ugly/appropriate for a small child only. I guess she's attempting some color but it's all clashing.

The woman on the right is just completely boring. She's wearing a boxy pea coat and some black tights, I see, along with the consummate chunky shoes she will love for one more season and then deam so over when thigh-high square toe Doc Martens swarm the fashion world.