Red platforms: Marc by Marc Jacobs.
I once made my escape in a borrowed red car in a snowstorm through the dark mountains.  I'd been trapped on a dead end road. Among the things I hoped to have in my new life of domestic peace and financial freedom: red shoes. Not shoes with red soles. Those are too easy and have become as ubiquitous as fake leopardskin in 1994. I wanted, want red shoes.

Streetpeeper (a younger, hipper version of the beloved Sartorialist) shoots the stylish from NY to Amsterdam to Sao Paulo to Warsaw (and elsewhere). There is Simone in Zurich, in Black Mango Blouse polka dots, Blue Cheap Monday jeans, a vintage floral scarf, big sunglasses, and darling red shoes: heels with bows. They're a shape of carmine and pick up the carmine swirls of the scarf. There's nothing like the glow of red shoes with faded blue jeans. It made my day. 


Shopbop is having a nearly irresistible sale: up to 70 percent on designers from hurdy-gurdy skinny-erotic Jovovich Hawk to ubercool Darryl K. Red denim peep toe wedges with bows by Mella: they're now the price of a cheap dinner--summery as they are, they'd look edgy-cosy with a September cardigan and lean jeans. But these are what I'm swooning for: red cotton platforms by Marc by Marc Jacobs with long wraparound ankle straps and really sexy twisted straps at the vamp, now for the cost of a nice dinner for two. Or maybe I'll skip dinner--in shoes like that dinner may not have a fighting chance. Nice may not have a fighting chance either.

The red shoe thing seems to be genetic, albeit oft-supressed for the sake of domestic harmony. But as the rebel I get to refute family customs and flaunt my cherry soles. My father, like G. Bruce Boyer in Sartorialist , thinks Fred Astaire--bone thin and floating on air in bespoke tweeds--is the height of style. Therefore red shoes are anathema (and you rarely see them on the Sartorialist). But back to the '50s, when my parents were courting in Greenwich Village over chianti and my mother smoked Pall Malls, she showed up one afternoon in a blue silk sheath and an exquisite pair of red suede pumps. My father took one look at the shoes and shook his head. "You're wearing hussy shoes," he said.

It takes a confident woman to wear red shoes and my mother didn't miss a beat. Taking a languid, measured puff on her cigarette she decided that since he'd grown up in the Bronx, he'd never seen well-made shoes in red before. So he'd been prejudiced against them too early to change his mind. She seized the opportunity. She had him take her shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue. "Any color so long as its black," she told the salesman. (Black shoes are a well-dressed woman's Model T Ford: always reliable.)

But thank goodness those red pumps were suede and not red patent leather with a reflection, she once confided in me, or we never would have gotten married.

Dorothy clicked her magic ruby slippers to go home. The svelte but modest heels had a high enough vamp to convey a sense of modesty. In truth, at least according to Wikipedia, L. Frank Baum shod his heroine in silver. But in Hollywood, silver didn't play so well. Red looked better against all that studio grass, not to mention the yellow bricks.  For the movie there were at least 4 pairs were made, all Innes Shoe white silk pumps, dyed a dark red and then overlaid with burgundy sequins. They look red in 3-strip technicolor. If they'd really been red, they would have looked orange. But movies are magic.

If I could, I'd take Astaire's baggy insouciant tweeds and mix them with just enough of a dare, and I'd take my Dad to lunch and see if he noticed. SteveMadden even makes tappable-looking, sleek Mary Janes called Astaire--in candy-apple red. Moschino's rich orange-red lace-up pump might look fetching with Jovovich Hawk's drapey slate blouse and plaid trouser shot through with rusty shades.  Or it might look like you were wearing stoplights on your feet. Fierce or foolish? We'll see. But in this world, red means go.