When it comes to women and footwear, it seems men are from Mars. Take my fiancé, who happily admitted the other night that he prefers to see my tootsies in a pair of basic black pumps, over my choice du jour—open-toe, exotic-skin heels with cut-outs. But browse the women’s shoe section of any top department store and you’ll see that the labels read like the membership roster of an old-boys club: Manolo Blahnik, Christian Louboutin, Jimmy Choo. Hot on these hall-of-famer heels is relatively new kid on the block Brian Atwood, whose eponymous line of women’s shoes (launched in 2001) falls somewhere between modernity and fetishism, with playful style names like Super Charged and Drama, confident colours and oh-so-sexy silhouettes.
It didn’t take long for Hollywood A-listers like Gwyneth Paltrow, Madonna and Victoria Beckham to walk his way, and Sarah Jessica Parker’s shoe-crazed Carrie Bradshaw sported his gold-studded lilac-suede Loca pumps in Sex and the City 2. Move over, Manolo.
The eldest of six siblings (“Three boys, three girls; just like The Brady Bunch”), Chicago-born Atwood studied fashion design at New York’s prestigious Fashion Institute of Technology before jetting off to Milan in 1991 to pursue a career in modelling. (As an aside, upon meeting Atwood, I scrawl in my notebook “swoon-worthy good looks.”)
“I was always sketching shoes, but at that point it meant nothing to me because I didn’t really know anything about it,” he says. It wasn’t until 1996 that he got his foot in the designing door, when the late Gianni Versace hired Atwood to apprentice under his sister, Donatella, at Versus. Soon after, Atwood was promoted to head accessories designer at Versace. “Gianni asked me to design some shoes for his haute couture show in Paris, and that started this whole obsession with shoes.”
First published in FASHION Magazine September 2010
related features
Comment on this article
Editor's note: This is a moderated forum, so your comments won't appear until approved by the moderator. Please help us foster a friendly environment by keeping your posts civil and on-point. We reserve the right to delete comments that include foul language, personal attacks on others, sales solicitations or any other inappropriate content. Posted comments reflect the opinions of the poster, not of Fashionmagazine.com. Read our privacy policy for more information.
Pamela Kenna writes:
I love high heels, but at 63, with a size 6 shoe, give me a heel hight I can wear all day. That is about a 2 1/2" heel. I also have a narrow foot and an even more narrow heel. Put that with other age related foot problems and shoe shopping is becoming more of an ordeal than a pleasure. And, no I do not want a "sensible shoe." I am saving that for when I have no choice."
—posted August 8, 2010 at 10:10 a.m.
Your comment