Fashion 89 : Shoo-Ins for Summer : Flats Featured in Fabrics, Patent Leather and Metallics
American women are in the midst of a flats attack. Just ask Libby Edelman, designer and co-owner of Sam & Libby shoes in Northern California, who accords top billing to her company’s leather ballerina slipper.
At Nina in New York, fashion director Flori Silverstein likens her firm’s big hit, a wedge-heel, patent-leather skimmer (2 million pairs sold in two years), to a classic T-shirt. And Miriam Sirota, the trendy co-owner of Privilege shoe stores in Los Angeles, insists “flats have become a basic.”
She’s seen the most avid high-heel wearers make the switch this spring, inspired perhaps by Sirota’s firm belief: “Flats don’t mean unflattering.”
Sometimes they don’t mean expensive either. This year the hot contender is expressive, fabric footwear that retails for $50 or less.
Sirota says she and partner Thierry Coulon carefully chose three cloth designs from Europe, all priced around $50, to sell along with much more expensive merchandise. While she thinks of them as “fun, one-season throwaway shoes,” she says they don’t have to be.
“It all depends on how much a woman wears them. If she buys one pair to go with three or four outfits and wears them once a week, they can last longer.”
Details such as a slight, wedge-heel on a pair of fuchsia, purple and black Shantung ballerina slippers at Privilege “make it just a little bit easier to walk in than a flat flat,” Sirota notes. “They sell well because they give the comfort and allure of a flat, but they give you height as well.”
Measuring in at 5-foot-1, Sirota scoffs at the notion that petite women need high heels.
“I’m in flats every day. I’m short and it doesn’t bother me even if I go somewhere where I’m the shortest person in the room.” Describing her personal style as “very, very trendy,” Sirota believes that some of today’s fashions, “Bermuda shorts, miniskirts and long, wide pants are totally unfit for high heels.”
Nina’s Silverstein has her own answers to why more and more women are getting into low-heel shoes: “Life is getting faster and we have to move faster.”
One of her company’s most popular styles is a $39, go-anywhere mule (a slip-on shoe open at the toe and heel) that comes in bright-colored patent leather or metallics. It is considered to have longevity despite the price.
“They need care,” Silverstein says, suggesting that patent be wiped with a damp cloth. She says cloth designs, such as pastel and print-mix espadrilles, “can be spot-cleaned with a little soap and water and a toothbrush, but the joy of most fabric shoes is not to have to spend a lot of money for them and not to worry about them.”
Silverstein’s tricks for fabric footwear include adding an emblem or an inexpensive Chanel-look pin where you might expect to see a bow. “Or you can paint them or change the ribbons. And if worst comes to worst, you can buy a little package of dye and dye them black.”
Fun and quality at a price are two reasons “fabric shoes are back,” she says. “Who wants to spend $100 for polka-dot leather pumps when you can have polka dots for $35 and throw them out at the end of the summer.”
For designer Edelman, this year’s challenge was “to get people out of last summer’s sneakers. We thought they would be ready for a change.” She designed canvas shoes in solids, stripes or dots and added a crest as well as a leather sole.
Lillian Navarro, shoe designer for Chinese Laundry, sees both stripes and European-inspired suede summer shoes, with slightly pointed toes and high vamps, as “wardrobe necessities.”
To get women’s feet closer to the ground, designers such as Navarro are adding clever ornamentations to flats that suggest “the dressy look of high heels,” she says.
