Fendi Shoes

Images via Vogue.com

It took me a couple of looks through the show photos and a couple of days to let it all marinate in my brain, but I’ve come around to totally loving the shoes from Fendi Spring 2012. I’m still no fan of the bags and feeling rather ambivalent about most of the clothes, but the shoes? The shoes can stay. They can stay in my closet. Almost all of them.

Karl Lagerfeld and Siliva Venturini Fendi were inspired by Italian scientiest and Nobel Prize winner Rita Levi-Montalcini, and her influence comes through in the collection’s footwear perhaps better than it does anywhere else. All of the straight lines and hard edges smack of scientific precision, and as it turns out, they make for pretty great shoes as well.

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Fendi Chameleon T-Strap Platforms, $810 via Nordstrom

You guys, listen when I tell you that Fall 2011 is going to be an unbelievable season for shoes. I hope that you saved your pennies over the summer, because you’re going to need every last one of them for what’s about to come your way. Today, it’s the Fendi Chameleon T-Strap Platform. Tomorrow, it could be anything. We’re living in a shoe minefield, and the only casualty will be our AmExes.

These shoes are so gorgeous and covetable and suddenly essential to my psychological well-being that I can no longer imagine a world where they don’t exist. I’ve only known about them for a few minutes, but much like yesterday’s gorgeous Zanottis, the world would be a darker place in the absence of these shoes. Fendi may have achieved momentary footwear transcendence.

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Fendi Chameleon Pumps, $950 (brown) and $935 (silver) via Saks

When I wrote about the shoes from Fendi’s Fall 2011 runway, the reception was…tepid. But I was undaunted! Fendi’s has remained one of my favorite shoe collections of the season, and seeing the Fendi Chameleon Pumps finally available for pre-order does nothing to dissuade me from my undying love for these shoes. They’re like a gorgeous, highly detailed version of your traditional schoolgirl mary janes, and that’s a look that I can get behind 100%, particularly with thicker heels making a big comeback.

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For some reason, I can’t shake the thought of Harry Potter when I look at the shoes from Fendi Fall 2011. The thick-heeled, wingtipped mary janes have a very stylized boarding school look to them, and I want every single pair. Every. Single. Pair. Look at those heels, ladies! You can wear these shoes during daylight hours! To work! Maybe even to school, if you’re still there! And you probably won’t even break your ankle while doing it or hate your shoe choice by the end of the day.

High-end shoes have gotten less and less wearable over the past few years, and now the pendulum seems to be slowly swinging back in the opposite direction. These shoes aren’t prohibitive in any way except price and they look very versatile, which makes me think that they’ll sell quite well indeed. And if they do, maybe more designers will focus on making great shoes that people can actually spend an entire day wearing. Stilettos aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, but having a more robust set of options is a positive thing for every luxury consumer.

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If you had told me that spring would be fast approaching and I’d be seriously lusting after a pair of closed-toed grey suede pumps with black mesh, I’d have told you that you were crazy. My personal style sensibility tends to skew every so slightly goth, but even I am not immune to the charms of bright colors and sandals after spending entire week last month trapped in my house by ice.

Alas, the Fendi Mesh Platform Pumps don’t say “spring” in the least, but that doesn’t mean I love them any less. The combination of grey suede and black mesh trim is sexy in the most sophisticated of ways, and the curvature of the shoe’s opening, combined with the thin ankle strap, is retro without being costume-y. I’d wear these shoes in any season.

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I currently live in Atlanta, where the month of December is usually marked sunny, clear days in the low-to-mid 50s. For the past week, it’s been approximately 35 degrees every day, and to put it mildly, I wasn’t quite prepared for such a precipitous drop in temperature. I don’t yet have a winter coat, and the only pair of boots that I’ve successfully bought this winter is my standard grey UGGs, which I try not to wear in public if at all possible. I like cold weather quite a bit, but I also like to be able to face it with the appropriate wardrobe.

If I were a fur person, the first thing on my winter shopping list would be the Fendi Rabbit Fur-Lined Motorcycle Boots. Not only are they neutral, a bit trendy and wearable in my everyday life, but I can think of nothing more pleasant right now than having my feet swaddled in lovely, soft fur while I go about my daily tasks.

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It’s always interesting to see what, if anything, a brand’s runway collection has to do with the rest of the line that it releases in stores. In the case of Fendi Spring 2011 shoes, the answer is: not a lot!

The collection includes many iterations of the colorblocked sandals and platforms that we saw on the brand’s Milan runway, but the rest of the line is largely comprised of shapes and ideas that we’ve seen Fendi do successfully in recent seasons. Large platforms and high heels reign, and the cutout sandals and pumps with changeable bows are among the best of the line’s non-runway offerings. Pictures, of course, are after the jump.

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Hands down, the best part about the Fendi Embossed Anaconda Clog is the fact that I didn’t even realize it was a clog until I read the name of the shoe. It managed to baffle me with orange faux snakeskin and a giant heel just long enough for me to fall in love with it before I even had the chance to realize what had happened.

If you had described this shoe to me without letting me see a picture of it, I would have told you that it would be a hot mess once produced. And it is a hot mess, but in the best way possible. It’s sexy, zany and totally making me dream of spring – even though it has yet to get particularly cold (or cold at all, grumble grumble) in Atlanta this year.

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The thing that keeps me returning again and again to the pictures of the shoes from Fendi Spring 2011 is that the brand somehow managed to take so many colors and make them work together so flawlessly, in so many different combinations. Even if the structure of these shoes isn’t your cup o’ tea, you have to give them some credit for masterful color work.

That being said, the structure of these shoes is my cup o’ tea, particularly in the face of so many designers doing stilettos with high platforms. Thick heels and no platforms (save for the two overstated wedges in the collection) seem fresh and new by contrast, and the tiny, unexpected touches of color have put me over the top. A bright red cork heel is something I never expected to love, but in this context, it seems essential.

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As we’ve discussed over the past couple of months, lace shoes can be a bit difficult. Not only do they tend to be to breezy for winter, but in a season that requires dedicated fashionistas to work with some nasty weather, the material can be far too delicate.

Luckily, shoes like the Fendi Lace Trim Envelope Booties find a way to work within the trend while still keeping your feet warm and dry. Not only that, but the judicious use of lace means that the shoes won’t look dated when fashion moves on to the Next Big Thing.

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