The Clog Blog

Good grief! It’s been nearly a year (well, over 9 months anyway) since I last posted. Posted for a few weeks, then sort of evaporated from the scene. It’s no coincidence that this was during the period that a big chunk of the global economy evaporated too, taking a bit of my customary cheery attitude with it.

But attitudes can recover a lot faster than economies, so I decided it was time for me to get back at it again, even though I’ve added little to my collection since my last post.

What got me interested in posting again was the reference in this past Friday’s Morning Shoe Report to columnist Jason Campbell’s acknowledgment that he really likes wearing high heels. It’s always a reassuring thing to hear of still another man who likes heels and has the courage to wear them with pride. He expresses my feelings exactly:

“I like the idea of a man remixing a traditionally female item and making it his own, giving it new purpose. I would equate it to the feeling a woman gets when she dons a tailored pantsuit—she immediately harnesses the strength of the opposite sex. For me, wearing heels isn’t about dressing like a woman (strangely enough I’ve never done that); it’s about incorporating the unexpected item into a man’s wardrobe. It feels modern and new, which I always strive for in all my dressing choices.”

(From http://jcreport.com/blog/131009/i-love-wear-pumps)

I like the “harnesses the strength of the opposite sex” - I know just what he means. There is a world of difference between dressing as the opposite sex and borrowing a particular item from it to embellish your own! Walking in high heels gives anyone, male or female, a peculiarly unique sense of confidence. It’s not just that you’ve mastered the technique of maintaining graceful balance on a precarious support, it’s that you’ve achieved a degree of poise that is fully as psychological as it is physical.

That’s my own take on it. I know from reading the seemingly permanent Heels for Men thread over at The Fashionspot that it’s a topic on which lots of folks have really strong opinions, so I thought it might be interesting to bring it up here and see what dedicated shoe-a-holics think.

A scientific education can be a blessing, because it gives you the ability to analyze things. It can also be a curse, because it puts you in the habit of analyzing EVERYTHING. Lately I’ve been analyzing heels, as you can tell from my previous blog entry.

I got to thinking about the fact that some heels are easier to walk in than others, even though they’re the same height and even the same pitch. I suspected it had a lot to do with whether the heels were set far back on the shoe or were tucked underneath the foot (undershot). Remember, your weight is carried down to the ground through your ankle bone, so when you stride along and the very back of the heel hits the ground first, any weight you put on that foot is carried down the white line:

As your full weight shifts to that foot, the force goes straight down the black line:

The problem is that during the fraction of a second it takes for your ankle to rotate through that small angle, you’re in a precarious situation with your ankle bent and a lot of pressure on that little bitty heel tip. You scarcely notice it, usually: allowing for this effect is what learning to wear heels is all about. But that’s the real reason some people break ankles walking in heels even on level surfaces – their weight goes off-center during that critical split second, and over they go.

To test my guess I did what any self-respecting scientist would do: I performed an experiment. I looked over my collection to find a couple of pairs with a good contrast of setbacks on heels of the same height. My Prada slingbacks and my Harley-Davidson mules (talk about a style contrast!) are a perfect example of the extremes:

The Harleys are so severely undershot that it tempts me to take too long a stride, with the result that my foot skids out in front of me and I go right on my fanny (a fact confirmed by involuntary experiment!). By contrast, the Pradas cut down the length of my stride so my ankle doesn’t have to bend through too much of an angle. The effect of all this is to change one’s gait, not just in short strides versus long, but even in the degree one can strut, swagger, or sway (for lack of more elegant descriptors).

I found I’m not the only one who notices this. Some years ago I had a pair of Via Spiga boots with a modest 4” heel (not at all a steep pitch on my size 11) that was pretty radically set back. I tried for a week to get used to them, but finally gave up and took them to a local charity shop. When the young girl at the counter accepted them she whispered so her boss couldn’t hear, “I had a pair of these once, but I could never learn to walk in them!”

Just got my pictures developed, and decided a new year was a good time to update my clog collection picture. Developed? Oh, yes, I still use a 1978 Nikon F2 film camera, purely mechanical and battery-independent. Face it, a digital camera that would equal this one in performance would cost me a whole collection’s worth of shoes!

Here are some of my shoes, on the same rack as last time. Not all clogs this time – decided to put in a few sandals. Shoes that are also on my page of the My Collection section on this site are noted. As before, reading left to right and top to bottom:

Prada sandals (collection)

YSL leopard print sandals (collection)

Cole Haan suede clogs (collection)

Cole Haan “cowboy” clogs (collection)

Donald J. Pliner suede clogs, lower heel than I usually pick, but still graceful

Another pair of the Donald J. Pliner clogs, smooth leather. I wear these more than the suede not because I prefer them, but because the reddish-brown dust of the New Mexico
desert looks much better on them than it does on black suede.

MICHAEL Michael Kors clogs (collection)

MICHAEL Michael Kors brown fur-lined clogs, the brown suede version of the black My Collection ones, bought a few months later at a January sale.

Patchwork velvet Coach clogs, apparently a version of the highly successful Coach patchwork clogs of a decade or so ago. Made since Coach outsourced some manufacture to China. I can’t complain – the shape is actually a better fit to my wide foot.

Coach brown-white-gold patchwork clogs (collection)

BCBG Max Azria sandals (collection)

MiuMiu clogs (collection)

MICHAEL Michael Kors studded clogs. To tell the truth, I probably wouldn’t have bought these if they hadn’t been offered at such an outrageously low sale price. I tend to wear them to the laundromat.

A re-issue of the original, classic Coach patchwork clogs: patent, leopard, suede, metallic, embroidery, logo – a real index of decorative shoe material. These from the China factory, even wider than the wooden-soled variety (wear with heavy socks!).

Okay, I’ve bored you enough with the me-me-me stuff. Next time I’ll explore some other minuscule aspect of shoe arcana.

In my Mom’s case, it was anything over 2 inches – she spent her entire short life firmly anchored to the ground. I sometimes wonder if my fixation on the over-three-inch heights is a result of childhood heel deprivation! These days, though, even my height urge is challenged. YSL, Louboutin, and Balenciaga now offer 6 or 7 inch heels, and I hear that an 8 inch will soon be sold by CL. We’re closing fast on the image of the 14 inch chopines of the Renaissance!

Of course the heel height by itself doesn’t tell the whole story. Chopines were actually cute little flats perched on a tower to keep milady’s feet out of the muck of the streets, and Balenciaga’s 7.5 inch heels had a platform half that height, as shown by the line.

What really sets the amount of staggering a heel produces is the pitch, the angle of your sole in the shoe. My Prada mules have 5 inch heels, my MiuMiu’s have 6 inch heels and a 1 inch platform – both have the same lift (heel above toe), but the MiuMiu’s are vastly easier to walk in because of exactly how the front part of the shoe is treated. Here’s an example, a comparison of a Versace shoe (left) with a Louboutin.

Even with the platform, the lift of the CL is higher, but the pitch it forces on your foot is less steep because it places the bend in your foot a little nearer the toes. If you stand barefoot and raise your heel gradually, you’ll feel the contact point on the ball of your foot move forward. Here’s what it looks like inside the shoe (excuse the blue lines – a friend sent me this to illustrate something else).

Around the point marked B, see how the foot doesn’t really touch the shoe, and note that some parts of the foot show whiter than others. White means stress – the pressure on the sole is greatest at the arrow. But near B the white shows that the foot is stressed there also, in that case because there is no support from the shoe. The bend of the shoe should have been closer to that of the foot for better support, and it would have reduced the pitch angle as well..

I suspect there’s a good bit of variation in where people’s feet bend, so the Versace shoe and the CL would each be perfect for someone who was comfortable in them. But this means that in addition to the height of the heel (corrected for the thickness of the platform) the structure of the shoe can determine whether a particular heel is wearable.

So to those who say “I just can’t wear anything over 2 (or 3, or 4) inch heels”, I say “Maybe you just haven’t found your ideal shoemaker!”

I’m at a loss for words!

Of the shoe, that is. Have you ever tried on a shoe in “your” size and found it too small or too large? Of course you have – we all have. In my collection (at home, not just this one on line here) I have a few size 10’s that are an ample fit, many 11’s that range from snug to a bit loose, and a couple of 12’s which pinch. Go figure.

I usually buy shoes in brick-and-mortar stores, so I can try them on. Of the very few I’ve tried to buy on line, I’ve had to send back at least half on grounds of size. I’m beginning to learn that’s because there really are no effective standards of size. Different designers, different manufacturers, different nations all produce their shoes on the basis of their own idea of what a size so-and-so is. Here’s an example:

My size US 11 corresponds to the following bunch of sizes:
Euro 41, according to Prada
Euro 42, according to YSL and Marc Jacobs
Euro 43, according to Cole Haan and Baby Phat
Euro 44, according to Payless

And what is “Euro”? On the size chart at Saks 5th Avenue, my 11 is a French 42 or an Italian 41, but Jean Paul Gaultier (French) says it’s 41 and Giuseppi Zanotti (Italian) says it’s 42 (Prada and YSL stick to their national standards).

Okay, you say, US size 11 is about at the size limit for average production – maybe that’s the problem. What about a more average size? Okay, let’s try a good, solid US 7:

Euro 37, according to most makers
But 37.5 according to Marc Jacobs,
38.5 according to Payless,
And Saks says 37 for Italy and 38 for France

Add to this the different structure of sandals, pumps, boots, clogs, etc. and you can see the source of the problem. One solution I’ve found if I’m shopping online for a brand I haven’t tried is to chat briefly before specifying a size, to see what they say about Euro equivalent (or French, or whatever). Sometimes it helps – it doesn’t always.

Let’s face it: size is a crapshoot. But if you want to know how sizes are MEANT to be measured, good old Wikipedia will give you an exact answer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe_sizes

The Morning Shoe Report for December 4 reminded me of this topic – I’ve always been a big fan of this form.

Loafers with some lift to the heel have been around pretty much forever, but mostly in the form of soccer mom wedges or Proper Office chunk heels. It was Stefano Pilati, in his first season at YSL, who created what I think of as the first Killer Heel loafer.

John Galliano did his own version,

Gucci put a slingback on it

and Chloe set it on a megawedge

Now it’s everywhere, from Victoria’s Secret

to Twolips

and Zappos even has a whole category for it in the Search By Style section.

I must say, as a gender-blending form I think it combines masculine and feminine elements more gracefully than most of the oxfords now being shown. Maybe it’s just me, but I see the oxford carrying a message of “elderly”, not just retro or tailored.