Fashion 88 : Fancy Feet

When too much is just enough and understatement is the last thing on your mind, the right shoes can help carry an outfit to artful excess. And designers are doing their fair share to support the new fashion effort. This holiday season they’re featuring elaborate footwear in richly embroidered or embossed fabrics, shaped to evoke storybook characters and fantasy costumes. Pilgrims, princesses, courtiers and Colette all come to mind.

In part, these fancy feet echo a number of European ready-to-wear designers’ attraction to neo-ethnic fashion. The folkloric look inspired fall and spring collections by French, Italian and English style setters.

Christian Lacroix continues to use naive, French Provencal costumes as a base for his couture line. Romeo Gigli featured Nehru jackets over chiffon pants for spring. And Giorgio Armani is among several to revive the India-inspired “rich hippie” look of the early ‘70s.

Taking a clue from the two traditions--ethnic as well as hippie--fancy feet do belong at informal events. To prove it, London’s Rifat Ozbek showed Turkish slippers of silver-embroidered velvet with his most recent day wear.

Silver-gray embroidered pumps can compliment damask or tapestry trousers for day, a velvet or silk Jacquard suit for dinner. Black satin flats, trimmed with velvet bows as well as satin roses at the toes, are a rich hippie’s answer to faded blue jeans.

And suede pumps with pleated organza trim would do well with a pair of palazzo pants, which so many designers are showing for festive at-home evenings.