Sarah Jessica Parker citing Carrie Bradshaw as the inspiration for her latest shoe line is kind of like taking a sick day for your near-death devil’s dance with Ebola because you stuck your fingers in a bowling ball in Brooklyn, that one time, ever.
It’s a concept so culturally offensive to true crusaders of the cause that committing such a cardinal sin would be enough to get you evicted from your gang’s social calendar and promptly quarantined until you’ve reeducated yourself about appropriate social norms.
In an event seemingly as unlikely as Carrie Bradshaw jetting off on a girls’ shopping trip to Las Vegas, the character’s real life Sarah Jessica Parker has flown to Sin City to do just that.
While some folks in the shoe world spend their days trolling celebrities’ Instagram accounts in search of their maiden ‘shoefie’ (a term that has not, and will never, stick) – for an article sure to only be read by the reporter in the first instance – other members of the fashion world were busy covering the launch of SJP’s new offering.
The aforementioned new form of ‘journalism’ is particularly futile, because reading a story about the first time a Kardashian took a happy snap of her big toe in a pair of strappy heels in 1995, reimagined with a pretty filter on Instagram, is about as good a use of my time as imaging how Gary Busy defecates.
The word, ‘shoefie’, has such strong association with the predator drug of choice, ‘roofie’, that perhaps a better use of the author’s time would be to shine awareness on the growing act of being ‘shoefied’, whereby an unwilling victim attacks her would-be rapist by hurling a shoe at his head.
But back to SJP.
How Ms. Parker’s overpriced, poorly constructed line managed to survive beyond one season is as baffling as the prediction that anyone other than the fashion one percent could pull off last year’s Birkenstocks worn with over-the-knee sock street style trend.
While I’m sure she had access to a band of top designers and style experts given her long history in fashion, it’s difficult to understand how the final product could be so blatantly interchangeable with any half-price sandal stewing in a sad, overstuffed bin at Payless Shoes – the life support for any shoe still in existence from a three-year-ago trend.
Talk among the well-heeled folk is that, not only are her shoes uncomfortable (although, that gripe we can let go through to the keeper, because, let’s face it, not many high heels are) but at more than $400 a pop, they’re hardly a match to other high-end brands.
The only reason I could imagine anyone purchasing a pair of SJP-blessed party shoes is if a self-esteem-deprived new implant in NYC was hoping that wearing a little piece of Carrie on her feet would help her immediately land her dream job after having a serendipitous meet-cute with a derivative of Mr. Big in a tipsy trip to Wholefoods, fueled by several rounds of Cosmopolitans with her hilarious new friends at Tao downtown.
But, upon reviewing her new line, I’m not even sure this delusional strand of ‘people to avoid in New York’ would buy into Parker’s tasteless offering, which seems better suited to what your gran might wear to her eldest granddaughter’s spring wedding, if that wedding was held in a school hall in the mid-west, in 1983.
Yet, given the NY-centric shoe industry, which consists of a predominantly 50-something backslapping male demographic, perhaps SJP has found her niche, given her biggest rivals for a hosting gig at the industry’s annual awards are celebrity shoe stars fag hags Fergie and Jessica Simpson, the latter depending on whichever cycle of the Weight Watchers program she’s currently in.
And, of course, there was the requisite carefully curated press day, which featured SJP lounging about on an old-school radiator (Because that’s what Carrie would be doing after an arduous week submitting a 300-word column in her $3500 a month three-bedroom West Village apartment) in Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s reimagined Las Vegas.
Because Hsieh owns the shoe world. Oh wait – SJP’s line is in collaboration with Zappos and its new push to grow its luxury goods business.
And the penny drops.
Hsieh, who has managed to bewitch both investors and every member man in the shoe world, has pretty much snapped-up what was left of the seedy side of sin city and transformed it into a giant universe of Zappos cultural goodness, in the same way I imagine sitting on a fit ball on a Sunday hanging out in my workplace neighborhood of Google would make me wonder if I had in fact gone mad after stumbling upon my 11th colleague siting of my weekend evening night out with friends, the latest being my boss while pounding out a drunken rendition of Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Call Me Maybe.’
The single 41-year old businessman, known for throwing lavish dinner parties that run till the wee hours, celebrated the last weekend of October throwing a mega bash three-day festival in downtown Vegas, boasting a Ferris wheel, solar-cooked tacos, and what fair wouldn’t be complete without an appearance from our friend Kanye West. Hsieh is the founder, financier and poster child of the Downtown Project in Las Vegas, a gutsy social experiment in urban renewal, otherwise known as a grown man’s pastime of moving pawns in a real-life SimCity. Unfortunately, unlike the computer game, the characters of Hsieh’s Sim City have no idea that in about six months, when he upgrades to Xbox 9, that they’re probably going to default on their mortgages and, suddenly, that decision to uproot your family from a stable life in San Fran to start an organic, gluten free rare-earth-inspired designer cake shop in the middle of buttfuck-nowhere doesn’t seem so smart, in hindsight.
Amy Jo Martin, who runs a social media company in the ‘community’, was one of the first to chase Hsieh to Vegas. On her blog, she has described living and working in the carefully curated hippie Coachella-inspired love fest as, “Imagine if Walk Disney ran Silicon Valley but everyone lived on the set of Cheers.” If I had to bank my livelihood on a drunk Mickey Mouse trying to control a bunch of beer-guzzling teens in trucker caps and sweatshirts while spending every night at the same bar where everyone knows my name with a bunch of self-identified losers, owned by a washed-up alcoholic ex-Boston Red Sox pitcher, I’d probably be found hanging from one of the rafters of Hsieh’s ‘Inspire Theater’.
Parker debuted the collection at a two-day pop-up event at The Shops at Crystals in Vegas, to commemorate the launch of her exclusive line for Zappos Couture, aptly titled ‘The Strip Collection’ – which is ironic, because the odds of a stripper donning a pair of her single-sole heels are as likely as Lindsay Lohan saying no to a belly-exposed hot mess night out ever.
The collection also features an array of handbags and candles in ‘very Vegas’-like shades of tangerine and gold, because who doesn’t want to splash down at your next all-day Scott Disick-hosted pool party without your leather handbag and candle in tow, perfect for when you need a little bit of extra light on the strip on your way home at 8PM.
On the source of her inspiration for the collection, Parker said, “I just ride the subway and look around, or I see women getting off the Staten Island ferry, or hailing a cab and jumping a puddle – they all play a huge part in how I design,” a comment so strange to describe the process of imaging shoes, given not one of those activities is even remotely slightly suited to wearing heels. Instead, she simply listed various modes of transport, getting from A to B. And there’s nothing very dazzling about that, not forgetting also the fact that she chose the Big Apple as her inspiration for a line dedicated to life on ‘The Strip’ in a desert thousands of miles away.
One of my favorites from the new collection, the ‘Fawn’ pump in Lavender, is actually a steely shade of silver, a shoe that looks like it might have been flung by a defensive Jersey Shore broad after fending off advances from an unwanted drunk suitor, only to wind-up heelless in a dirty dumpster only to be called home by a nosy rodent days later. Another generic gem is the $350 ‘Fawn’ in Pink Satin, which pal Simpson flogs in the exact same hue and style for a steal at $79.95.
For the money shot – the ‘Carrie’ – Parker conjured up a shoe so unbelievably ugly that it would struggle to prove its case for a cameo appearance on the reality cosmetic surgery show Botched. Featuring a cankle-showcasing T-bar, awkward heel and toe-cleavage-inducing strappy pointy front, the nod to the iconic Sex & The City fashionista will have you looking like an overstuffed sausage set for a comedic roast at your next 80’s themed high school reunion, with all your former colleagues having since moved on from their single, SATC, cheap cask wine days, preferring instead sitcoms of the Netflix variety. While you’re trotting around in your ‘Liberty Metal Nappa’ – note that ‘Nappa’ was tossed in to give the otherwise known color of metallic purple an exotic, Californian feel – most of your classmates are dressed in chic Louboutin black, relating more to Parker’s newest screen project, the upcoming TV show, ‘Divorced’, a polite way of admitting many of them are going through one.
Perhaps the neatest explanation of Parker’s lack of passion about the line but for another Carrie-dependent cash cow (or lack of a PR person post the age of 23) is her selection of the style staple she just, ‘can’t live without’. “Whatever boot can withstand a puddle that doesn’t appear to be a puddle!”
Perhaps during her days of idly watching other mediocre New Yorkers engage in the art of hopping on, and off, various modes of public transport and Uber rides, somewhere, sometime, from within the safe confines of her parked tinted black SUV, she saw a poor, innocent girl step in a puddle, getting drenched in the process, her feet soaking wet.
“Oh that sweet girl, harmed by just going about town, trying to do her thing. If only she’d been wearing more appropriate shoes!” Parker thought, musing from afar. “Getting around town on your own is tough!” she added, talking in first person in the classic way only Carrie can.
Her lovely day now complete, she returned to her West Village boudoir and informed her agent she’d like to launch another line of heels, just so she could ensure her next winter spent courtside at ‘The Public Transport Games,’ would be packed with similar, titillating episodes.
Oh, and then she popped the cherry and took a ‘shoefie’.
NB: I am one of Sarah Jessica Parker’s biggest fans and life-long devotee of Sex & the City. I’m just not down with her shoe line.
Oh – and I pray to god she’s not there on location filming SATC FOUR.
I’ll happily lose $5 to a solid ten minutes on the pokies, but I draw the line at spending $20 to watch an ageing quartet bang their way around Sin City with two-point-five kids in tow for 120.
