When it’s a boot, apparently. Let me explain.
For at least a couple of decades now, the basic range of shoes available from fetish footwear designers and manufacturers has included a style widely known as the Oxford. Deriving its name from the Oxford brogue, it is basically a classic 1930s lady’s lace-up walking shoe restyled for fetish purposes with the addition of a pointed toe, a stiletto heel, an optional platform and usually, but not always, a nice shiny black patent finish.
Now it so happens that the high-heeled laced-up Oxford is a favourite fetish style of mine. It looks more purposeful, more businesslike than standard high heeled pumps, aka court shoes. The Oxford, combining the sleek viciousness of a regular stiletto with overtones of corsetting ritual and connotations of schoolmarmish authority, is perhaps the ultimate dominatrix shoe.
So naturally when this style filters through into mainstream fashion, as it has of late, there is cause for celebration. Even though most mainstream designers have sought to mute the SM symbolism of the fetish original by using softer curves, less sky-scraping heels, or brown or pastel leathers in place of relentless shiny black patent, the pervy power of the style still shines through. And so on our streets right now you see women strutting around shod in yet another barely disguised derivation of dominatrix chic.
What then, you ask, is there to complain about? Well, it seems that for some reason, fashion journalists have decided that the high-heeled lace-up Oxford shoe is now in fact a boot. In the last week I’ve noticed three separate fashion spreads featuring lace-up Oxfords from various designers such as Stuart Weitzman described in the accompanying credits as ‘ankle boots’. Excuse me? Ankle boots?
You expect sloppy nomenclature from tabloid newsdesk sub-editors who still haven’t learnt to distinguish between rubber, leather and pvc and can’t tell tights from stockings (at least when it comes to caption-writing).
But journalists working on fashion pages are usually much more careful about getting garment descriptions correct.
I’d love to know which hack started misnaming this classic shoe style as a boot, and why other journalists who ought to know better are, erm, slavishly following suit.
Very nice, but not a boot: Signore lace-up platform shoe in Hickory antique, $285
www.stuartweitzman.com
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