"Suum Cuique," said Cicero, translating as "To Each His Own." And that is the way with this shoe, designed by his countrywoman Miuccia Prada.
To me this object is as astonishing as anything in nature, so clever in its mixing of color and so sensually pleasing in its juxtaposition of materials, and all pulled together in a mind bogglingly inventive way.
Look at the sleek wet scarlet slick of the top and the ancient Grinling Gibbons curls on the heel. All that gilt and heft on the bottom decorated with tender vines carved with the "loose and airy lightness of flowers." And then buckled up on top with the little belt that kept Red Riding Hood's picnic basket with grandma's gift of wine inside closed up safe and snug.
After I first saw this fashion photo in Vogue magazine I couldn't get it out of my head for a month. Then I encountered the same image on a smart, stylish woman's blog, where the shoe was being completely dismissed and utterly ridiculed. The cost! The height! The vulgarity!
One can think of what a shoe will set you back, I suppose, but I prefer to think of all the places one can take you, as Eugene Field did in his nursery rhyme: “Wynken, Blynken and Nod one night / Sailed off in a wooden shoe - / Sailed on a river of crystal light, / Into a sea of dew..."
So now you see as I do. Or not. Suum cuique, then, but you know I'll have an excellent view of any standing-room rock and roll stage come fall.
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