As a shoe obsessive, I often point my camera lens at the catwalk floor, even when footwear isn't the intended focus. At the recent London shows, two strong footwear themes emerged, and they have continued on into the Milan and Paris collections.
First there was a definite element of fashion following the austerity agenda with simple, utilitarian shoes, apparently reflecting the uniforms of working men (quite literally on the wet pavements at Topman Design). And second, we saw the continuing influence of trainers and sportswear details in high-fashion footwear.
However, this being fashion, looks can be deceiving, so apparently straightforward shapes such as simple workaday oxfords turned out to have a subtle, metallic sheen (as at Common) or were high-gloss with elements of bright colour at the sole (at Jonathan Saunders).
At Prada, always directional with their footwear, shoes were a shiny hybrid of chunky trainer and shoe in solid brights, not wildly dissimilar to the Miu Miu men's trainer-shoe amalgams of the 90s with their then-revolutionary rubberised flashes of primary colour. The proportions of these shoes were less extreme than the espadrille platforms and raised shark-teeth soles of recent Prada collections and, as such, are likely to find a wider fan-base.
Which brings me on to a third men's shoe theme of note: a certain element of proportion play, verging on the ugly, but in pared-back colours and with one or two elements exaggerated as part of a minimal whole.
Rick Owens has been playing with this outline for some time, with his solid rubber-soled trainers and canvas boots with a slightly turned-up profile, like an exaggerated form of the classic downtown baseball boot (one such style of his is titled Ramones). In his Paris menswear show this week, the heavy rubber toes of the boots were seen peeking out from under long trouser hems in his airman-meets-Trojan-warrior collection.
Owens' ongoing collaborations with Adidas also explore this exaggerated perspective as with the avant-garde elevated soles on display at his much-discussed step-dancing women's show.
Raf Simons highly applauded collaborative show with artist Sterling Ruby featured solid-coloured, rubber-soled boots with an even more exaggerated profile than Owens', of JS Lowry-cum-cartoon-character proportions.
Less controversially, perhaps, at Carven, earlier in the week as part of a collection infused with looks inspired by the sartorial excess of classic American gangster style, spats were given a futuristic update: alongside solid white, black and grey shoes exhibiting elements of both the high-gloss and minimal trends.
Bringing the workwear trends and proportion play to a head on Saturday, Kenzo showed oversized safety boots, some sporting bold cross-straps in industrial white or more subtle chevrons in brown or orchid on black.
