I like Marni for a lot of reasons, many of them which we’ve already discussed either here or at PurseBlog. The more I think about the brand, though, the more I think that my admiration for Consuelo Castiglioni’s design work is that it feels like it was designed by fashion people, for fashion people. The brand not only embraces its quirky aesthetic, but it does it in a way that’s both high-end and cognizant of fashion history. Read More…

If you’ve noticed, we’ve had a running theme on TalkShoes over the past couple of days: Versace and what is simultaneously so wrong and so right about its shoes. The brand’s love for lucite in particular tends to be a sticking point for some people, but really, there’s nothing inherently tacky about the material. In fact, I think it gets an entirely undeserved bad reputation when it comes to lucite as a shoe design element. Read More…

Marni Embellished Suede Platforms, $1160 via Net-a-Porter

I remember my first pair of high heels very clearly. I was 12 years old, and my mother reluctantly bought them for me to go with the black dress I had picked out to wear to a friend’s bat mitzvah. They were Nine West, and the tall, chunky heel seemed like the most sophisticated thing in the world to me. Read More…

If all of the posts I’ve written so far haven’t convinced you that chunky heels are the single biggest shoes trend for fall, perhaps these photos of Marni Fall 2011 will be the thing that does it. There’s not a stiletto to be found in this quirky collection of bi- and tri-colored shoes; instead, we have leather wedges and and neo-clog mary janes in the kinds of muted colors that will go perfectly with fall knits. Read More…