House Slippers Can Tell a Lot about Their Owner
The things we wear at home reflect our true nature that sometimes we hide successfully whenever we go out. It is natural that no one would go to work or to the party in house slippers. Let’s try to guess with the help of our slippers who we are when we hide behind boots, stilettos, sneakers and patent-leather shoes; who we are with our favorite house slippers on. The slippers are an expression of our unique personality as we choose the ones that catch our fancy and make us feel comfortable and cozy.
Animal slippers or funny slippers are preferred by those who are most likely to be charming conversationalists. Such women are introverts who tend to be emotional, which does not prevent them from taking an interest in what is going on outside and arousing a reciprocal interest.
Boudoir low-heeled slippers decorated with fluff are a choice of the woman who has a refined taste and wants to be elegant at home as well. No doubt, she has a dressing gown and several accessories to match the slippers. She likes to look feminine and never goes over the top. Sometimes such slippers prefer those who pretend to be fragile but most of all like to walk with the feet uncovered.
Slippers with pointed toes are exotic! The women who wear such slippers place a premium on comfort of their own house where they spend a lot of time. There is some mystery in their eyes. They know what furniture will really make a house as they pay a lot of attention to the interior design and their house suit, though they are not the stay-at-home sort. They rate beauty highly. Generally speaking, one will never find them at home wearing an old dressing gown.
Slippers with a back are a classical variant of house slippers. The women with such slippers on don’t pay much attention to their appearance at home. Comfort is above all for them. Their house is a reserve, a castle and it’s nobody’s business whether you walk there with old slippers or crystal shoes on.
Step-ins prefer those for whom home is a resting place after crazy working days. They believe that one should smarten oneself up to go out but home is a place to relax.
Manolo Blahnik Footwear
‘Many consider shoes to be just shoes, but if they make a woman happier at least for several minutes, they seem to mean more than mere shoes…’ says Manolo Blahnik.
Nearly 80 pairs of shoes per day are manufactured mostly manually at Manolo Blahnik’s works in Italy. The designer has always been an adherent of tradition and high quality, that’s why he works only with real masters who know their trade.
Blahnik as before is not going to switch to mass production, to manufacture more affordable footwear collections or to try to satisfy totally the demand for his shoes. A limited quantity of the manufactured shoes styles lays stress on their exclusive designs and makes the most famous fashion-conscious women burn with the desire to buy these very shoes.
The footwear designed by Manolo Blahnik is a piece of art made especially for the selected few.
And the feeling of joining the elite when buying another pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes makes this brand world-known and desired. It is anything but a secret that sometimes a woman has to forget about comfort when she has Manolo Blahnik shoes on. However, the pleasure that women take in putting on Manolo Blahnik shoes is akin to the erotic one.
In childhood Manolo was merged into the atmosphere of high fashion. His parents bought their clothes from famous fashion designers of those days. His mother was of a Spanish origin and his father was from Czechoslovakia. There were a lot of films and literature on fashion industry in their house. Manolo Blahnik’s destiny was predetermined.
In 1968 Manolo got a job at one of the boutiques in Paris. The grandiose ideas regarding his first collection were maturing in his mind. Two years later he moved to London on invitation of Zapanta store owner. This way a famous shoemaker launched his career.
But he didn’t become a celebrity at once. As late as 1973 Blahnik decided to be self-employed and set up a men footwear boutique. The first Manolo Blahnik’s collecton was a tremendous success and soon the most famous fashion houses like PERRY ELLIS, CALVIN KLEIN, JEAN MUIR, ZANDRA RHODES, YVES St. LAURENT, CHRISTIAN DIOR, RIFAT OZBEK snowed their orders on Manolo Blahnik. However, soon Mamolo realized that there were too many limitations and too little flight of imagination in designing of men footwear and he switched to women shoes design.
It sounds that Blahnik has a gift for creation footwear that becomes a cult. Everyone knows that high-heeled shoes had existed long before him, but it was he who glorified the shoes with pointed toes and 4in. high heels that are an eternal hit.
Lacoste: History Review
René Lacoste was a famous tennis player who was awarded a lot of top prizes (French Open (1925, 1927), Roland Garros (1929), Wimbledon (1925,1928) and U.S. Open (1926, 1927)). He was given a nickname ‘Crocodile’ by the American journalists following the agreement between René Lacoste and the French captain at Davis Cup in 1923. The latter undertook to buy René a crocodile suitcase if René won the tournament.
The company La Chemise Lacoste was established in France in 1933 by René Lacoste and Andre Gillier who was the head of a full-fashioning mill to produce tennis, golf and sailing garments. The first Lacoste shirt made a splash in tennis fashion industry. It was white, much shorter than the previous ones and had short sleeves. Moreover, the logo was on the face side of the shirt.
In 1951 the company began to export its produce to Italy and widened the range of the shirts, having added coloured Lacoste tennis shirts. In 1952 La Chemise Lacoste began to deliver the garments to the USA where they were advertised as ‘the status symbol of the competent sportsman’.
In 1963 the company’s management was passed into the hands of Lacoste’s son - Bernard Lacoste. It was the time when Lacoste shorts, footwear, perfume, clocks and different leather goods were designed. And track records of the famous family were the best advertisement for the company’s products. For example, in 1969 Catherine Lacoste, René Lacoste’s daughter, won the U. S. Ladies Golf Open.
In fact, René Lacoste invented a metal tennis racket that took the place of the wooden one. Sportsmen from Jimmy Connors to Billie Jean King preferred this metal tennis racket to other ones. Later on Lacoste products were put on the markets in Japan (1966), Brazil (1978), Australia (1982), and in 1982 Lacoste company opened its first boutique in Paris (avenue Victor Hugo).
At the end of 2008 Lacoste brand celebrated 75th anniversary of the crocodile logo. And the company decided to emphasize its French origin one more time. As a result a black French beret and sneakers were designed.
Zaha Hadid, a famous architect who worked on such projects as BMW Central Building, London Aquatics Centre and many others, has designed new Lacoste shoes styles. The shoes perfectly flow round the feet, which seems to be very comfortable. The first part of the new Lacoste-Hadid collection will be launched in March 2009, following by the second part in May.
High-Heeled Shoes For Men!
Even Galeazzo Ciano (a diplomat, Mussolini’s son-in-law) wore high-heeled shoes. Moreover, he seemed to like them. In 1970-s high-heeled shoes were everybody’s craze. Later on men high-heeled shoes disappeared. But these days all of a sudden politicians - Berlusconi and Sarkozy, actors – Tom Cruise, and singers - Elton John got to wearing high-heeled shoes.
Famous Italian shoemakers say that there are a lot of men among their customers who really want to have high-heeled shoes. Or, to be more precise, they are passionate about wedge-heeled shoes as they believe that such shoes will make them taller. The two statesmen [Berlusconi and Sarkozy] need absolutely no extra self-confidence or any fast promotion track. However, the former has a weakness for an instep raiser (from 2 to 3.5 inches) and the latter for an amazingly high heel (3.5 inches).
Nowadays there are no doubts left that the men high-heeled shoes date back to ancient times. By the way, nowadays historians consider that initially high-heeled shoes were most probably created for men? Amazing, doesn’t it? Not only mollycoddled Roman patricians wore high-heeled shoes, but also every man who was riding a horse as heels made it easier to handle a horse. And a lot of signors wore high-heeled shoes while walking along the streets of gorgeous Venice.
But there are men who don’t accept this trend. For example, Totò De Matteis, a grandson of Ciro Paone who headed Kiton Company, believes that only famous people want to look taller as they try to look younger than their age, which is a shortcoming. His opinion coincides with the one of Alberto Moretti, the president of Arfango Company. The latter says, ‘Powerful and respected people don’t need high-heeled shoes. It is the matter of style. A smart man will never ever have high-heeled shoes in his wardrobe’.
Today classical men footwear as a rule has a 2-4cm heel. Though designers do their utmost to bring men back to the medieval times when court dandies were partial to high heels like women today. Sometimes following the fashion, they even had to wear shoes with heels that were more than 4 inches high! Can you imagine this?
