Killer Shoes On The Spotlight in NYC
Just in time for New York Fashion Week, a new exhibition of “killer” high-heeled shoes is coming to Brooklyn. “Killer Heels: The Art of the High-Heeled Shoe” was created by the Brooklyn Museum and opened last Wednesday.
The exhibition featuring these alluring designs, some dating back centuries, will eventually travel to museums around the country. The show will feature over 160 historical and contemporary shoes, including mid-17th century Italian chopines made of silk, leather and wood; silk-embroidered, Manchu platform shoes from China; a late 1930s, wool “heel hat” made by Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dali; a black leather platform bootie with an eight-inch heel designed by Rem D. Koolhaas for Lady Gaga in 2012; and a mink-covered pump made by Celine last year.
Other designers with shoes in the exhibition include Manolo Blahnik, Christian Louboutin, Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo, Roger Vivier for House of Dior, Zaha Hadid, Iris van Herpen, Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood. Shoes on display come from the Brooklyn Museum costume collection housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and from the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto.
One of the shoes featured is United Nude’s iconic Eamz.
“I wanted to make a shoe with an invisible heel. I looked down and there it was: The Eames chair leg from the chair I was sitting on. . . . What if the heel pretended to be not a part of the shoe but be part of the surroundings? This way the heel would be in disguise and in a way disappear. . . . The chair became a part of the shoe by the simple gesture of remix in design.”
—Rem D. Koolhaas, United Nude
More information on the exhibition is available here.
