Paris Fashion Week heralds the finale to what has been a packed calendar of catwalk shows. The designers’s eagerly awaited collections for Autumn/Winter 2015 have been revealed, new trends noted, and the commercial wheel for fashion’s next season set in motion once again. As the globe-trotting fashion pack jostle for the much-coveted front row seats, it won’t be just the clothes they are hotly anticipating, but also the shoes.
Within the commercial sphere of fashion shoes were originally of secondary importance to clothing. But television shows such as “Sex and the City,” launched in 1998, have catapulted the shoe into mainstream culture as an object of desire and sometimes obsession for many women. Marketing studies have shown that spending in the U.K. alone on shoes has been increasing steadily, with growth in the footwear market now having overtaken that of clothing.
Sales of shoes in the U.K. in 2014 were estimated to be worth almost £9.4 billion ($14.2 billion). The investments that London department stores such as Selfridges and Harrods have made in redesigning and transforming their women’s shoe departments into salons of visual delights and inspirations demonstrates further how important shoes are to fashion. So commercially, it’s evident that shoes are no longer the afterthought to clothing.
The Power of Shoes
Shoes have always held a significant place in popular culture. Fairy tales and stories such as the “Wizard of Oz” and “Cinderella” have presented them as objects that hold transformative, magical, and sometimes even dark powers.
