I considered the blue to be pretty unorthodox. So it was in white Keds as a boy that I played tennis, yachted and stole hubcaps. The sneaker since then has gone through changes. The sneaker industry has ingested steroids and hallucinogens, and produced astonishing effects, shoes that look like cumulus clouds, or reptiles of the Amazon basin, or tarted-up space stations. A doggedly competitive spirit of pseudo-childish Play and Fun seems to have taken over the thinking of the sneaker industry.
All fashion is an aesthetic of distortion.
But platform shoes have risen so high you could use them to drill for oil in the Gulf. They look spectacular, even crazy, and elevate foot fashion to the status of a major social hazard. A young woman in a car who tries to lift the great block on her right foot from accelerator to brake has become as dangerous as a gang member with a Glock 9mm. The old heel may have been just as hard to walk in, but was infinitely more graceful. These shoes are a dangerous responsibility.