Height of chic – or beyond the pale?
Once they were a But walking Essex girl joke. are a suddenly white stilettos are they the... celebrity favourite. So by Julia Lawrence
THE year was 1984. The miners were striking, Margaret Thatcher was in No. 10, The Smiths were on Top Of The Pops and my fellow Essex girls and I were risking if not life then most certainly limb, treading the boards of Clacton Pier in our white stilettos.
Bought from Freeman Hardy Willis in the High Street with the spoils of our Saturday jobs at Boots or Sainsbury’s, how we loved those shoes, even if our mothers considered them ‘common’.
Teamed with a pair of drainpipe jeans or a puff-ball ‘rah-rah’ skirt, our hair gelled and backcombed into fearsome, thicket-like nests you could bounce a brick off, we thought we were the epitome of cool.
The painful years of Essex girls jokes, of which we’d be the cruel butt for decades to come, were still ahead of us. The only obstacles on our seemingly clear path to world supremacy were those pencil-thin gaps between the boards of the pier — our playground on the long, hot summer nights between O-Levels and results day. Heels were snapped, ankles turned and dignity lost as our stilettos sank between the planks.
As with all fashion follies, it wasn’t to last. By the time we sat our A-Levels, we’d passed through white stilettos, via pixie boots and tasselled loafers, and entered sensible adulthood, agreeing never to mention white stilettos in future. Yet, now, here they are again!
I was transported back to those halcyon days of my youth
when I saw Claudia Winkleman wearing a pair on Strictly Come Dancing. Since then, I’ve seen white stilettos cropping up elsewhere, on the feet of very well-heeled women — even the Duchess of Cambridge has a pair.
How has this happened? Has fashion joined the queue to poke fun at us Essex girls? I don’t think so. The fact is, fashion adores the ironic joke of nurturing something that was once firmly at the top of the worst-taste list. It’s the ultimate challenge to take something no one else would touch and make it desirable: think leggings, shoulder pads and one-piece ‘bodies’.
Suddenly, on a ‘posh’ girl’s foot, a white stiletto screams privilege.
With their wanton impracticality, expensive white stilettos are worn by girls who step only between taxi and restaurant foyer and don’t need to fret about scuffs or puddles.
A beautiful pair of white designer stilettos, as worn by Game Of Thrones star Emilia Clarke and Hollywood A-lister Jessica Alba, can cost nearly £1,000, and teamed with a long, elegant skirt, look stunning.
While I won’t be buying any myself — these days I fear a snapped ankle could see me incapacitated for years — I am happy to pass the baton. Just be careful on the pier, ladies . . .
Posh pumps: Victoria Beckham seems anxious not to lose her heels, securing them with a strap from her trews