I read a headline the other day that made me click on it. Normally I’m immune to such marketing efforts, but this item stood out from the myriad of other items, because it is something I had been wondering about for a while: interchangeable heels.
Statement heels are in vogue at the moment, just look at Missoni’s offerings: snazzy, eye catching and sexy all at once. But why should we women, when we lack floor and cupboard space, in the shoebox-sized apartments that we call home, have to own thousands of pairs of different shoes, just to ensure that we have something to wear for any occasion?
As Marilyn Monroe once said, ‘Give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world’.
So wouldn’t life be so much simpler if we had just one (OK, OK, 5 or 6 then) top parts of a shoe, boot or sandal and then each top could be personalised, depending on where you were wearing it, with a chunky heel, a kitten heel, a stiletto heel, a wedge heel… a ‘you name it’ heel?
I mean, how many of us, about 5 minutes into a night out, instantly regret our choice of footwear? Wishing we had worn something more practical or sexy or venue-appropriate?
I did a little research to see if my idea had legs (or heels), and found what I’d been searching for.
The interchangeable heel brands
Mime et moi are onto something with their ‘pick your size of heel’ range. You can hit up the dance floor with the best of them, and then swap your 4 inch heels for a flat one, for the walk home. No more having to go bare foot. But they don’t allow you to change a chunky, work-appropriate, black heel for a 6 inch, glitter-encrusted, silver stiletto.
Government and fashion demands
Why should this topic have been in my mind? Because of the recent furore surrounding women being forced to wear high heels to work. The government, in April, rejected a call to introduce a new law that banned companies from stipulating that their female employees must wear heels.
I’m one of those people who wants my cake and eat it: I want to be able to wear heels and I want to be able to wear them to work. What I don’t want, is to have to do something, just because I’m told to.
So as much as I love wearing heels, and at 6 ft 2 inches (my height has never prevented me from wearing them), I wear them alot. But if it came to my employer telling me I had to wear them, to look good, I would instantly go into foot stomping mode and refuse.
So maybe I should up sticks and move to British Columbia, where they have seen sense and scrapped the dress code that required female employees to wear high heels. Of course you can still wear them if you want to, it’s just no one will force you to. And that is my kind of place.
