Posted by Bethan Holt, Fashion Junior at Large
Today is A-level results day which strikes fear into anyone under the age of 18 (crap, that could be me one day) and evokes strong memories for anyone who did the exams. As with many of my memories, A-level results involved a pair of shoes. The day after I found out I'd got into the university I didn't want to go to, I went on a very hungover shopping trip with my Mum and she bought me a pair of nearly thigh high suede lace up pirate boots as a reward for my efforts. Rewind to GCSE results and an abiding recollection is a pair of pink and grey striped stilettos with a huge pink bow on the front- another reward for hard-earned grades. Although my tastes were questionable, these are far more pleasant markers in my personal footwear history than the annual trip to my school's appointed shoe shop which would happen at this time each year, like clockwork, from the age of five to sixteen. It was a hugely painful wrangle to confront the fact that I had yet another year ahead of me in my regulation flat, black, boring lace-ups.
Thankfully times have changed and six years on from A-level results, the Startrites which punctuated my younger years have been replaced by much more exciting options. It is pretty obvious from my browsing, and eventual edit, that footwear is rather glitzy right now- think studs, full on metallic and more glitter from Miu Miu- I swear they're keeping the small bits of sparkle stuff industry in the black. The big game changer is glitz for day- it's now fine for trainers, everyday boots and the like to be just as blinged up as their evening counterparts. There's always further to go in the world though and I feel like I'm perhaps half way up my personal shoe Everest, at the top of which lies the most impractical, out of this world awesome and super expensive footwear- some sort of custom made Laurence Dacade/ Celine with a dash of Nicholas Kirkwood? The shoes below are also fantasies, of course. Unless by some freak of nature I pass an A-level in "Magicing from Nowhere Lots of Shoe Money". Something to work on, Michael Gove?
