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So what did Carrie et al do for all us "wannabe" shoe gals she encouraged a delicously healthy addiction to shoes glorious shoes and we only have ourselves to blame for the worst shoe trends ever to grace our dainty footsies.

It all started when girls looked like boys and boys looked like themselves only with an effiminate gait enter the doc marten boot . Cold and blunt and flat with huge tyre tread heels and dotty or zany prints sprawled all over them . Once the mainstay of urban youth now the favoured choice of rebel chicks and doormen alike ! With the adrogynous 80's who can forget those new romantic quiffs and the prettiness of culture club's clothes so cute and frilly ; (such bright colours) came the pointed cruella de ville stilleto pump. Neon blues and garish pinks were spotted at various nighclubs and bars up and down the country . The get rich eat more decade was reflected in the vampish styles and sleek points of killer heels strutting around pavements and near poolside cafes the uniform of the seriously rich .These type of shoes got you noticed these type of shoes made you taller and these type of shoes could cause dangerous injuries to your unhappy feet.

With the 90's came a spiritual awakening and a return to easy living the sneaker took on new dimensions as lesiure wear took on a radical overhaul. Yoga Pants and soft satin slippers replaced the gruesome points of the 80's but with this dressed down feeling a hybrid shoobie was born spawned from softest sheep skin and at first only available as an ankle boot ( later these would appear in all heights knee mid calf etc ) . So ugly was this shoe / boot thing that even its name appeared to denote its appearance so unrefined and so ungainly were its dimensions, construction and overall look that it encouraged the worst kind of copies instantly reproduced in cheaper material looking just as bad. On the high street, at the gym on the beach it was seen everywhere. Women were making a stand resorting to the most unpalatable looking shoe ever then coughing up hundreds of dollars for it ! The name and the brand engulfed most of the Western world and this repugant shoe still graces the feet of some of the most beautiful women today. When Pamela Anderson Lee Mischa Barton and Kate Moss were all spotted with these on their tootsies demand for the item rocketed and one of the worst shoe trends ever was well and truly born.

Now in the midst of Summer we see the "it shoe" a wedge of "skyscraper" proportions with some kind of genius mechanical engineering that actually allows the wearer to balance gingerly while attempting to pound the pavements and subway. So excruiatingly difficult is it for the hapless individual to delicately negotiate the stones and fallen debris from buildings and office towers that it sometimes takes up to one hour to walk a 20 minute journey. This has got to be a shoe trend on the wane . Could you really endure this type of pain? Wedges with such intricate and ornate heels that some of them were stacked the wrong way round or shaped like pyramids . Were the designers playing a joke on us ? Or the victims of mind altering drugs ?What happened to good old fashioned quality foot wear without the novelty heels. Still this penchant for quirky sky high wedges goes on unabated and as millions of women all fall down again and again and again I wonder if we can ever consign this trend to the summer of 20008 or whether these wicked wedges wil resurface again ?

Learn more about this author, Saira Karim.
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