The Death of Sky-High Heels

"Meredith Melling Burke ... walked in off the elevator in a beige 3.1 Phillip Lim chesterfield and beige trousers tucked into an impeccable black pair from Miu Miu -- that were completely flat! A sign of things to come?" Andre Leon Talley wrote in a recent blog post for Vogue. Blame it on Michelle Obama (who never seems to rise above a kitten heel) or fashion designer Maria Cornejo, who famously outfitted her models in flats-only this past Fashion Week, but the sky-high heel that garnered so much attention on SS09 runways may be being thrown out the window, or at least temporarily laid to rest.

According to Fashionologie, “Carine Roitfeld, notorious for her pro-heel stance, was snapped recently at a luncheon in Cannes wearing flats; Francisco Costa shod all of his Cruise 2010 models in brogues and flat boots, and Vogue’s Mark Holgate noted at yesterday’s Cruise 2010 Yves Saint Laurent presentation that even ‘the house that started the platform craze is coming down off them’.” In other words, it’s time to break out your most comfortable shoes and leave the pain-inducing sky-high pairs behind. If the trend towards flatter footwear turns out to be true, I can’t imagine many people (save for the Christian Louboutins and Manolo Blahniks of the world) complaining.