Operating at a loss
One of the categories around here is called “Dyssynergy,” which is intended to occupy the opposite pole from actual synergy: the whole is decidedly less than the sum of its parts. While clearly there are plenty of posts in that category that don’t precisely mesh with that definition — you try fitting 14,500 posts into fewer than 60 categories — once in a while something comes up that just seems to fit perfectly.
This particular example comes from Prada’s Autumn 2010/Winter 2011 presentation. I think very highly of this shoe, delightfully insubstantial as it is, and I suspect that the tights (I’m assuming they’re tights and not actual socks, though it’s hard to tell from this picture, or, for that matter, from this one) are quite nice in their own way, but the combination of the two comes off as somewhere between “yawn” and “meh.” It’s the proportioning, I think: you wear a little nothing of a shoe, you need hosiery just this side of gossamer, or none at all, while a serious sock demands a substantial shoe.
Then again, it’s not like Prada is paying me to make these fine judgment calls, so as always, your mileage may vary.
Addendum: “So wrong,” says Lynn.
fillyjonk »
9 March 2010 · 7:43 am
Now I’m half tempted to go into my flickr stream, grab the photo of the heaviest crunchiest socks that I’ve knit that I have on there, and caption it:
“I R SRS SOX. I DEMAND SRS SHOE.”
But yeah. I guess they’re trying to call up the spirit of the 80s with the stilettos and socks, but really, I think that’s too many of Madonna’s re-inventions in the past to be able to be resuscitated.
John Salmon »
9 March 2010 · 9:29 am
That combo looks tackorama. And I guess I don’t get the idea of a high-heeled sandal. I’ll have to check with one of my sisters, who works in the fashion world, but I bet she’d agree.
Joan of Argghh! »
9 March 2010 · 7:11 pm
Oh the shoe is really desirable. Yummy, in fact.
That is most definitely a sock however. Look at how thickly it’s knit.
Someone should be dragged off and shot, as Acidman was wont to say.
Dick Stanley »
9 March 2010 · 9:50 pm
Perfect, if probably itchy, for the current weather/climate. Does eliminate the presumed intended sexiness of the shoe, however.
fillyjonk »
10 March 2010 · 6:28 am
It occurs to me that that’s perhaps the footwear equivalent of the mullet haircut, of which it was famously said, “Business in the front, party in the back.”