THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR WALKING (AND FOR GETTING THERE)

FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S NOTE IN STYLE WEEKEND, THE FRIDAY LIFESTYLE SPECIAL OF MANILA BULLETIN, FRIDAY, 11JANUARY2008)

Just recovering from the New Year’s Eve blast the night before, I woke up to a late-morning treat from Star Movies, the 2005 Golden Globe Award-nominated British film Kinky Boots. What a perfect way to start 2008, especially for me for whom, on account of my professional pursuits, shoes are as important as a contemporary piece at the museum! I do remember waking up in the middle of the night in my youth and from under the sheets pointing a flashlight on my collection of quirky black shoes, especially after having bought a fresh pair to add to it.

BLURB
I don’t know what you’re used to makin’, but now you’re making sex, two-and-a-half feet of irresistible tubular sex. —Chiwetel Ejiefor as Lola in Kinky Boots

Rather than a punctuation mark, shoes to me are an opening remark. They have infinitely more power to create a look than, say, a shirt or a dress. What good is a killer suit, for instance, when matched with a miserable pair of shoes? But a good pair can stand its ground even if worn with rags, especially if that’s the point. Imagine a woman in a drab, dreary dress and then imagine what a red-hot, stiletto-sexy heel can do to make her deserving of a second look. Imagine the reverse and chances are you will simply mutter under your breath, “What a waste!”
But Kinky Boots is not just about footwear, although the thigh-high boots in red python leather and rhinestone-studded sole take up so much more space on the movie poster than any of its main cast, the endearing Joel Edgerton and the showstopping Chiwetel Ejiefor. Based on the true story of Divine, a trademark of W.J. Brookes Ltd, a real factory of shoes and boots in Northampton, the comedy-drama is about dreams and reality and what it takes to turn one into the other. Without a doubt, as a BBC review has put, it “is more uplifting than a nine-inch stiletto.”
It’s a perfect New Year treat for me, too, just when I am contemplating the challenges that await me and my magazine team this year in our mission to be ahead of the trends or to sniff out the style news before they hit the streets. Although I have been doing this since the early ’90s, I find magazine work as daunting as when my very first editor, on my very first day in an editorial office, assigned me to do captions on brooches, which necessitated a trip to the Thomas Jefferson Library in Makati and then to the British Council in Quezon City, if only because, even if I was doing only captions, I wanted so much to pack each of them with some history, a bit of trivia, and loads of fun.
In Kinky Boots, Edgerton’s character, Charlie Price, had to see beyond shoes to make it in the shoe business, which he had grudgingly inherited after his father’s untimely death. It was an ailing business, but against all odds and with only half his heart in it in the beginning, it led him off track to save the factory and the jobs of the people working in it. With the help of Ejiefor’s character, Lola, a drag queen, whose friendship he could not have forged under ordinary circumstances, Charlie deviated from classic men’s shoes to fetish footwear, on whose sky-high heels he, along with his entire team of devoted craftsmen, literally made it from provincial Northampton to the shoe capital Milan in pursuit of the all-important niche.
How inspiring, especially because it is a true success story! I know, for instance, that what I do as a magazine editor is not so much a matter of life and death as what my contemporaries in the hard news do. When an earthquake or a tsunami claim lives, you cannot turn to me for information, let alone guidance, but I certainly can walk you through some good times!
That’s my job. It can get crazy, although it doesn’t quite cover the State of the Nation or the stock exchange tremors. Some of my friends describe it as frou frou, but they do expect me to tell them what’s best for them when they want to sit back and relax and enjoy life.
Like a pair of boots, I tell you, that’s really not quite easy to do.


A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.