ShoeSense

Shoe Nomenclature

I just KNOW that every shoe lover has wondered, at least once in her life, what's up with those shoe names?

Sure, there are some that are innocuous enough--your run-of-the-mill Annie, Lolita, Bridget, or Carolyn. For example, these Chiara flats from Claudia Ciuti:

These are pretty girls' names, probably of some importance to the designer, or selected so they sound fashionable and desirable to the heiress crowd. The rest of us don't really give a damn.

Clergerie opts for the exotic, hard-to-pin-down names, perhaps more suited to the general sobriety and understated chic of this line: Kazu, Taposa, Nulux, Ugaro, Mazil, Psaume:

Numbers instead of names is a really popular trend, especially among the couture brands--e.g., Christian Lacroix 964290:
The number denominations seem to be pretty popular: they are widely used by Casadei, Marc Jacobs, Costume National, Pucci, Missoni, Claudio Merazzi, L'Autre Chose, Sigerson Morrison, Jean Paul Gaultier and others. Is this some haute couture convention I don't know about? If someone knows why, do give me a holler!

Some are whimsical (or just smart-ass), like the Kenneth Cole ones: Bocachino, Angel Cake, Do-Re-Mi, Frank Call, Cos I Say So, Pop Out, Day Planner:

Some go for the high brow references: The Iliad from Michael Kors, the Leibniz, from Bruno Magli, Spartacus from Naughty Monkey.

And then, there are others that, well, are certainly worth a second look--like in, "say whaaaa?"

For your viewing pleasure, here are some of these shoe-puzzles I haven't been able to solve recently:

Stuart Weitzman's "Webcam":

Or the Oklahoma:

Or the Puppy Love from Irregular Choice (nicely complemented by their Woof 3116-2B model):

Or the Elbow Crease from Aerosoles:


There are others: Celery Stick, Gram Central, Dread Stock, Front Door, Product Democracy, Shanghai Nights.

All I'm saying, is there such a job as shoe-naming? For it sounds like FUN!

posted by Cristina Hanganu-Bresch @ 9:00 PM