LOUBOUTIN CAN’T EVEN LIBERATE THE WELL-HEELED
JTHE Duchess of Cambridge raced Olympic gold medallist Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill to help SportsAid his week, wearing chic £29.99 culottes from Zara.
What a clever girl she is. Cheerful budget, high-street gear, making a point of how ordinary she is compared to her high-maintenance American sister-in-law.
Funny, though. At school, I had to wear culottes which were prissily called “divided skirts”. Chic? No. They were ugly, chafing, knee-length horrors. Good for hockey – but oh, the chapped thighs each winter. I never thought I’d see stylish royalty wearing them.
JSHOE designer Christian Louboutin, who charges a fortune for stilettos bearing his trademark red sole (which no one can see but which make his customers feel smug and exclusive) said this week that six-inch stiletto heels represent a “form of liberty” for
RWHICH Shropshire town has been flooded? “Shroosbury” or “Shrowsbury”?
My grandparents, who farmed for most of their lives near the village of Shawbury, seven miles from Shrewsbury, never had a shred of doubt. “It’s Shrowsbury, Richard,” I was told almost as soon as I could talk. In fact everyone in Shawbury pronounced it women. Which is, of course, cobblers. I can’t wear high heels, mostly because my knees are knackered by ruptured anterior cruciate ligaments (an injury usually sustained by sportsmen but in my case walking crab-like in a plane so as not to wake my snoozing child in the next seat). like that, including the woman who ran the village shop, Mrs Foulkes, and even the vicar. So there!
You may say it doesn’t matter, but to an adopted Shropshire lad like me, it does. My grandparents must spin in their graves every time a TV reporter refers to “Shroosbury”. Dear oh dear. What ever would the vicar have said?
But in the past, stilettos – so irresistible my husband gave me a pair of Jimmy Choos to make up after a row – practically ruined my feet. I now have excruciating bunions. But at least the ballet flats I wear are cheap. Louboutins can set you back £4,500. That’s not liberating – it’s madness.