To accompany the exhibition, Kurt Geiger produced an informative booklet on the history of the Stiletto
Great news. After years of struggling to work/parties/girls nights out in towering heels, longing with all your heart to be wearing comfy flats, there is another way. Stilettos shoes are now officially Art. No more toe pain or tottering, they must be moved straight away from the shoe cupboard to the mantelpiece, where they now belong.
With increasing age comes the desire to admire rather than actually wear towering heels and this way we can still fall in love with them, buy them on a whim, admire their sculptural curves and glossy exteriors, but no longer need to wear them. Result!
This week as part of the day job The Women's Room was invited to the smart Dover Street art gallery Air, to see Stiletto, an exhibition of stilettos from Kurt Geiger's autumn winter 2009 collection, which launches in stores late July. It was a sleek and glamerous affair, fashionably black inside with the shoes presented as if tiny sculptures, on individual shiny chrome pedestals, each one highlighted with its own spot light.
It was clear these were not just shoes, presented in a boring old shop, but minature works of art, carefully curated and stylishly presented on one of London's leading gallery streets. There was even a conceptual stiletto sculpture in the window which would not look out of place in the current Royal Acadamy Summer Exhibition.
Kurt Geiger wanted to 'do something different' to celebrate its expertise with the stiletto so shipped in Tom Ford's visual consultant on luxury presentation, John Field, to create the art gallery display. And the shoes were deliciously covetable, available in a dull gold gloss, indecently shiny scarlet, fetishly high black and even crystal encrusted ones. Stupendously high, they were all quite worthy of arty admiration and just like an art gallery you had to ask about the price and availability.
We've long been concerned about the way shoes were going in the Women's Room as you know from previous posts, but we are mighty relieved that we can now see a way out of the vertiginous confusion. Move the beautiful but unwearable ones onto the display table and slip on the flats.
