Licentiate Column 24/02/11 The Red Shoes

Have you ever heard the Tale of the Red Shoes, written by Hans Christian Anderson? A vain girl tricks her adoptive mother into buying her a pair of much-coveted red shoes, which causes her to pay no attention in church. She stops attending services and goes to a party in her bescarleted feet instead. Once she starts to dance, the shoes will not allow her to stop. She dances and dances without an end in sight, through storms, through her mother's funeral, until she reaches the point of insanity or death, when a man take mercy on her and chops off her feet.

She eventually realises the folly of emotionally blackmailing a parent into irresponsible shoe buying, then she dies. So, a happy ending for everyone involved. Or maybe not.

In 1948, a seminal dance film was released, also called The Red Shoes. In it, aspiring prima ballerina Vicky Page gets the chance to dance the lead role in the titular ballet, but eventually has to choose between love of a man or love of her art, symbolised potently in the form of a pair of red ballet slippers. The consequences are predictably disastrous.

That's the trouble with red shoes: They symbolise the things that a woman are, very unfairly, restricted from freely having. These stories are designed to encourage women to conform. Dedicate yourself to your artistic passion instead of looking after a husband? Indulge in hedonism and freedom of self expression? Be an independent person who answers only to herself? Then prepare to have your legs chopped off with a rusty axe before repenting your wicked, wicked ways.

Even now, the world at large doesn't want us to own a pair of proper red shoes. After spending a day in town with my friend Fiona, bemoaning the dearth of such appendages, she came home and asked a question on Facebook; 'what do red shoes mean?' The answers were varied, but the real corkers included such gems as 'red shoes, no knickers' and 'red shoes = Amsterdam window girl'. Apparently, only whores get to don red shoes.

In this day and age, it's surprising that such asinine restrictions actually exist in terms of a simple primary colour. I want a pair of red shoes. Preferably with a very high heel and all kinds of ribbons and general fripperies. And yet, I have never ever had sex in exchange for money - what kind of topsy-turvy world do we live in?

My non-purchase is not as a result of these utterly sophomoric preconceptions; it's the conditions that these preconceptions may have precipitated. There are just no nice red shoes to be had. Of the 1000 or so pairs of women's shoes available on behemoth e-tailer ASOS.com, just fifteen are red, and even then, maybe only two pairs are even slightly close to that particular shade or rich, tomatoey, viscid, brilliantine red that has provoked centuries-long controversy.

It's damnably sexist to assume that such a shade of footwear automatically shrills 'come to bed NOW'. Don't get me wrong, it commands your attention - but the sexual attention can be unwanted or unintended. Red holds immense, often untapped power. Just look at the pope. He wears red shoes, and you don't see anyone wolf-whistling at him or mistaking him for a call girl, now do you?

My Personal Style Resolutions #12: Rose Tinted Uncertainty

Rose Tinted Uncertainty is a blog filled with loads of things from heels to screen prints, petticoats to freckles. Everything that fills up the ever girly, ever curvy and ever obsessed with fashion world of me (Rhona), founder of Rose Tinted Uncertainty, is on there.


What’s in a shoe? Your foot… obviously, and that is what I want to talk about, my feet and more importantly my shoes.


My New Years resolution is to wear more heels (it’s the same as last year) and to teach my feet that heels are their friend and not their foe. For a girl who loves heels it’s very upsetting to know that my feet don’t agree…

I’m getting on in years (almost 21!) and I am slowly but surely turning into a woman. But I want to be more than a woman, I want to be a lady (really really badly) and as well as being polite and kind (I promise I am  working on them) a lady wears heels. So you can see my dilemma, I have feet who want to stay young and wear little girl mary-janes and converse and will not listen to the rest of my body which is dying to be a lady. Stubborn little feet, aren’t they?

So my cunning plan is to get loads (don’t know where I’ll store them) of mid-heeled shoes for the daytime. Cute little fifties style ones, as well heeled brogues and loafers. This way my feet will be slightly raised all day and when I wish to wear my stilettoes it won’t seem such an ordeal for my stubborn little feet.

I know what you’re thinking, “flawless plan Rhona, you’re a genius!” But unfortunately there is a reason why it is the same resolution as last year. I bought loads of heels last year but nearly all of them were really high so I had little to no mid heels for the day. This of course resulted in the same problem as the year before- really sore feet when I ventured out in my stilettoes.

So I have to restrain myself and buy only mid-heeled shoes (unless I come across an amazing pair of high heels that I will have to get or face a painful death- but only then). It will be hard, I am addicted to shoes and I’ve no job so it isn’t as if I can buy both high and mid-heeled shoes.

So it is a good thing that there are loads of fabulous mid-heeled shoes available in Office. Fair play to them, they are all so beautiful! I will take all of these please…

All shoes from Office

Hopefully this year I will keep on track…

Rhona xx

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Marie Antoinette Shoe Lust

Ah Marie Antoinette. All style, little substance (from what we're led to believe; personally I think the woman wasn't exactly expected to be an intellectual giant - so she probably just made the best of a bad situation with the naiveté of a teenage girl). With terrible, incredibly badly timed consequences.



Above is a clip from the Sophia Coppola decadence porn/historical biopic snoozefest Marie Antoinette. But wait, what's that? Could that possibly be... no, surely not... a lilac pair of Converse?

Yep, I know it's deliberate. Excuse me for being obnoxious, but Marie Antoinette can keep her Cons. I want a pair of the ostentatiously frilled, pastel pretty shoes in that there film. Or in the spirit of Marie Antoinette herself, I'll just take them all, thanks.

Even though the kitten heel is ostensibly 'back'  (Where did it go?  Was it on holidays?) I somehow don't think that Manolo Blahnik will be reissuing any of his designs for the film and that L.C.P de Pompei, the costume designers for the film, probably won't entertain my order for one pair of shoes.  Ho hum.

However, a quick search on Etsy reveals not one but two stores that repurpose gently worn court shoes and make them acceptably eighteenth century.  It's an odd cycle of history repeating itself - 80's court shoes are named after shoes not unlike those worn by courtiers.  Through the addition of embellishments, the shoe eventually devolves back into it's original self.

Marie Antoinette shoes from 4 My Favourite Things 

Marie Antoinette Shoes from Oxford Heaven

The shoes are at very reasonable price points - Oxford Heaven even does custom orders.  Unfortunately, not only do I not have a Manolo budget, I don't even have an Etsy budget.  Sigh.

If the shoe fits...

This is one of my favourite posts from the old blog...
If you're the kind of person who feels sick at the sight of a person's bare feet (and there's more of them than you'd think) perhaps you shouldn't look any further.


I was promised a new pair of shoes. What I got was this... It took my best friend A more than an hour to painstakingly draw in all the aspects of an Adidas Predator (am I right?) soccer boot on my feet. Next time a pair of Ann D's I think. It's the only way I'll get my hands on a pair.

I love my new boots so much - I might just keep them. Below are some detail shots. Apologies for the poor quality. The photos were taken with my awful camera phone and the lighting was a shaky bedside lamp, resulting in overly-dramatic shadows.





My favourite part is the stud detail (though that was the tickliest to have done).