Morning:
9°c
My exploration of the joys of London Fashion Week did not last long. A single show, to be precise. I queued outside a grim warehouse in Shoreditch to see next year's lines from B-Rude, the label fronted by Boy George. Scheduled for 8.30pm, the show began well over an hour late and lasted only 10 minutes or so.
Naomi Campbell began and ended it but all the other models looked not simply unattractive but notably unwell. The clothes were beyond silly. After it was over, Boy George himself made a brief turn, cutting a curious figure, seeming completely shapeless, like poultry that has been taken off the bone and stuffed.
But there had been one point of interest. The catwalk connected two rooms on slightly different levels, joined by some jerry-built wooden steps. It was fascinating to see not just the models but the audience try to negotiate them in the tottering heels and wedges obligatory this season. One model lost her nerve and took her shoes off, revealing bits of tissue paper stuffed between her toes, absorbing blood.
These shoes have heels four, five even six inches high and super-thick soles too. In my view, they looked daft on or off, but then I know nothing much of fashion. What I do know is that the women wearing them could barely walk or even stand in them with ease. The columnist Liz Jones bravely tried them this week and found them all unendurable. Those from Prada, costing £400, she could stand for 10 minutes; from Marni, £330, for just five seconds.
If these heels were imposed upon women by men, they would be considered a human rights abuse. But they're not. Actually, most men, in so far as they notice at all, don't like high heels. Every one I've ever asked has duly reported that he finds women more attractive when they can walk naturally. They find being with women who can't make normal progress along the pavement or climb the stairs just irritating.
High heels are an affliction that women impose upon themselves. They pay a high price, too. Famously, Naomi Campbell herself went over in nine-inch wedges back in 1994. More than 8,000 women a year are admitted to casualty in Britain after tripping over in high heels. The long-term damage of arthritis and back trouble is even more serious.
A recent biography tells an awful story that I now think of every time I see a woman in high heels. In Jennie Churchill: Winston's American Mother, Anne Sebba explains that, in her mid-sixties, this extremely vain woman still loved to shop for fancy shoes with super-high heels. In some prize specimens bought in Rome, she tripped and fell down some oak stairs in Somerset, breaking her left leg badly near the ankle. Two weeks later, gangrene had set in and the leg had to be hurriedly amputated above the knee. She died, completely needlessly. And that was Winston's mum.
Jennie Churchill thus remains the fashion victim of fashion victims and deserves to be remembered as such. Though the bubbleheads who people London Fashion Week challenge her hard.
