pointedly long.
It was 2006. I was sitting in my living room watching Giselle Bündchen zoom around Paris on an episode of MTV Cribs. She was at the height of her fame. Those Victoria Secret “What Is Sexy” commercials were running with hypnotic regularity. Everyone wanted her hair, those pony legs. We would have even taken that prominent nose and the belly button piercing. Wide sunglasses shielding her eyes, Giselle threw her head back and laughed a throaty “I’m wonderfully famous” laugh, and then stepped out of the car, revealing a pair of wide-leg jeans and pointed shoes.
I wanted those pointed shoes.
Young and impressionable, I went out and bought pointed shoes from the local Nordstrom Rack. Only these weren’t exactly the ones Miss Bündchen was wearing; they were cumbersome low-heeled mules with visible stitching – one pair in black and the other in chartreuse. A small part of me knew that these were ugly derivatives, shabby replacements for the real thing – and that part of me kept said shoes in the back of my closet for the years leading up to their donation to the Goodwill, left to clutter the racks with heaps of other pointed shoes, which had since become unfashionable.
And so when Marc Jacobs sent his models down the runway for Louis Vuitton’s Spring 2013 collection, each sporting a pair of elegant, witch-worthy pointed kitten heels, I experienced two conflicting emotions. One: the embracing enthusiasm of fashion’s early adopter (“How fresh! How new!”). Two: the cringing anxiety of an old lady weary of repeating her wayward sartorial youth (“Oh, no. Those again?”).
Soon the trickle-down effect will saturate the market. Heels will lower and toes will narrow. Steve Madden will knock them off, as will Jeffrey Campbell. I will be left to decide whether to follow the fashion flock or stick to my staples, perhaps lamenting later that I was not chicer in my day. Then again, I never regretted not getting my belly button pierced.– Jenny Bahn
Will you indulge this trend? Or leave it be?
