Well Shod, Well Imformed

SASS AND BIDE DEBUT RUSSIAN STRIP CLUB HEELS

 screen grab / obsession isn't just a perfume

London Fashion Week kicked off overnight with local get-about Pip Edwards debuting her A/W 10/11 footwear collection for Australian uber brand Sass And Bide.

The collection marks the first collaboration between Edwards (S&B accessories designer) and former Alexander McQueen staffer, and more recently, the creative director of Ksubi’s short-lived accessories division, Carrie Cooper.

Cooper, now designing her own brand, Beau Coops, spoke exclusively to Imelda and described Edwards foray into footwear as “Barbarella goes to a Russian strip club”

The Despotic Queen was given a sneak peek of the metallic silver vinylite strip heels earlier this week, with Cooper explaining the collaboration came about after dining with Edwards. Cooper also revealed the Showgirl heels were manufactured by a strip heel specialist who was thrown off the dance podium when Cooper and Edwards instanced on removing the traditional coin slot option (normally found in the platform of strip shoes), for fashion uppers and re-enforced lucite platform/stiletto heel.

As reported by Imelda, Cooper, who in addition to designing her own line, recently established a design/sales co-op with wholesale Tsars David and Rocco Mascitelli called The House of Last.

Cooper is already producing footwear (under the ‘Last’ umbrella) for Stolen Girlfriends Club and Leona Edmonston, however it’s the glittering addition of the antipodes most prized retail jewel, Sass AND Bide, which establishes House of Last as the newest and most exciting design/wholesale tour de footwear force in Australia.

While the distribution of Sass and Bide’s footwear is being kept ‘tight’, Imelda has no doubt that Sydney’s bright young thangs will be lining up to shake their money makers in Edward’s Sass AND Bide stitts.

*imelda begs your forgiveness for the shady screen grab - at time of publishing, there were NO catwalk images

THE SLOW BURNING SUPERNOVA

A homage to French born Cubist Francis Picabia is the core reference of London based footwear designer Behnaz Kanani’s A/W 09/10 collection.

“Hold up meth lips”, Imelda hears you scream “why A/W 09/10 and not S/S 10?”

As the pendulum swings towards the independent footwear designer (a response to the S/S 10 catwalk affront) the Persian born Behnaz Kanani is set to become a playa-playa next season and the Despotic Queen feels since I’ve overlooked (read forgotten) to blog her A/W 09/10 collection that before we shift into drive I want to reverse (a season).

And to paraphrase an out of control teen slut Carmen, “It’s my haute blog and I’ll do what I want”

If you need a quick refresher then Imelda suggests you click HERE otherwise let’s shut up and drive!

Despite her impressive pedigree and high profile stockists, including Harvey Nicholas and Dover Street Market, the Cordwainers trained Kanani is still a relative unknown designer.

 

Kanani straddles a curious divide.  Her hand-made footwear is only available in limited numbers, yet unlike say, Spanish born, French based cobbler Vicente Rey her footwear is purpose built for world domination.

While her fellow Brit cobblers Kirkwood and Skovgaard are drilling the US market, Kanani is on the slow burn - which the Despotic Queen imagines is precisely how this conundrum likes to keep her ascension.

It’s not that commercial success eludes Kanani, rather she has (like her design process) a timeless approach to building her eponymously named brand, which Imelda speculates was inherited from her time working for venerable houses like Bruno Magli and Jimmy Choo, where the ‘art’ of shoe making is, at times, overshadowed by the bottom line.

That said, Kanani is no slouch when it comes to marketing and brand identity. This season she debuts her logo (seen below) that the designer says is “like a discreet point of light, a hallmark for the brand”

 image credit / The Business of Fashion

Titled ‘A Scent of a Women’ Kanani says inspiration for her A/W 09/10 collection came from 'Evoked memories, the perception of expanding matter in constant movement and the rhythm of impulse'

 

Crafted from the finest crocodile, lizard, soft calf skins and nubuck, Kanani’s sculpted heel platforms are complimented by a palette of ‘black, unusual sangria and cool grey in nuances of arsenic, taupe and slate combined with burnt orange and hues of old lavender’

 

A focal point of the collection is Kanani’s sculpted heels which remind the Despotic Queen of a hybrid of Thea Cadabra’s ‘Maid Shoe’ and Stéphane Couvé Bonnaire’s witty giraffe heel pump from 1996. However, Kanani describes the heels as a design that ‘translates the essence of a woman into elegant curvaceous shapes’ and ‘silhouettes that echo and are in harmony with the feminine body’

 

BEYONCE VIDEO PHONES GAGA FOR MCQUEEN

Fuck me sideways with a rusty chainsaw - is there any other pop music ho dropping a video this week, coz if there isn't at some point I’d like get back to talkin’ about shoes and not the hos wearing 'em (ok-ok…Imelda’s kinda addicted to the traffic spike)

First up we had Gaga wearing McQueen in Bad Romance, then Rihanna wearing Rodarte in Russian Roulette, and now we’ve got Beyonce wearing Alexander McQueen (A/W 09/10), Louboutin and some unidentifiable Prada wader / suspender boots (which I think might be Stella McCartney A/W 09/10)  in the diabolical Video Phone, WHICH also features HRH Lady Gaga pimpin’ out Louboutin.

Anyone else having trouble keepin’ up?

 

 

 

RIHANNA PLAYS RUSSIAN ROULETTE IN RODARTE

Since I’ve already tainted this unholy place by penning a celebrity post (celebrating Gaga’s Bad Romance with McQueen), it only seemed fair that RiRi should taste some of Imelda’s loves, no?

While I’m not disappointed with Rihanna’s decision to wear Rodarte (by Nicholas Kirkwood) in her new video Russian Roulette, I was surprised that she chose to wear boots from the A/W 09/10 collection.

Sheesh. I know times are tough but rummaging through the clearance dumpster…that’s something I expect from Jessica Simpson. I guess next time Rihanna will need canned heat in her heels if she’s going to beat Gaga to the good shoes.

 

 

 

UPDATED - Memo to Rihanna. If you're serious about making a run on 'Gaga' (and earning your Order of Imelda steak knives) then let me suggest one of footwear's best kept secrets, Gianni Barbato. Thank me later.

CALL OF THE WILD

He’s felt the ire of a Despotic Queen and fallen out of favour with a raven haired Scottish Queen but none of this fazes the blithe Aussie wunder-cobbler, Tristan “shit happens from time to time” Blair.

Nor should it…Blair is Australian footwear’s original trailblazer.

At a time when the local industry was bogged down in a quagmire of designer knock-off’s (not much has changed), Blair bravely presented consumers (and Buyers) with his alternative vision of affordable designer footwear.

Blair has been kind enough to give Imelda (and her beloved Imeldettes) a sneak peek at his 9^th collection.

For A/W 10 Blair continues his upward trajectory by drawing inspiration from a variety of sources ranging from the African landscape to the austerity of Victorian times.

As always, the Designer has remained true to his aesthetic of juxtaposing contrasts while for A/W 10 the designer examines “different ideas for heel shapes, from the architectural heel to the comfortable wedge to the sharp sleek stiletto”.