TO-MORROW’S SHOES

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 158, 24 September 1927, Page 18 (Supplement)

TO-MORROW’S SHOES

By Joan Rossiter There is, at the moment, a marked preference for shoes which are of a buff colour, best described as parchment, and made of a fine glace. They are favoured as the correct accompaniment to light frocks. Because we have experienced so much paleness in shoes and stockings during the last season, it may be cosidered the natural trend of events that both are becoming a little darker. Some well-groomed women wear gunmetal hosiery, with very dark shoes, but that combination is not yet a general vogue. Biege, however, is being •ra.pidly superseded by tan and the paler chocolate shades. Other desigfis compromise very nicely by being made from equal amounts of light and dark leathers, arranged in various patterns. Even when purchasing skin shoes, there are few pale shades from which to make a choice. Crocodile shoes showing particularly wide markings are becoming popular, and are ar distinct contrast from the minute webbings seen on snake ad lizard skins. BLACK IS FAVOURED Black patent leather looks exceedingly well with pastel coloured outfits, and the fashionable dress schemes which are principally black and white. When the shoemakers yield to the temptation for insets of snake and python skin, these are usually placed on the outsides only. One sees this tendency particularly on the new patent court shoes. The court shape is very fashionable at the moment and there are far more trimmings on these simple styles than formerly, except when they happen to be of coloured kid, and then they are preferred plain. This craze for the black patent shoe has produced among its new styles a shoe whose front is covered with close lines of grey, till one imagines that the shoes might have been stitched by machine to match the silk collar and cuffs on the new two-piece suit. TOE AND HEEL The present vogue for coloured shoes shows very clearly that red is far from neglected as an attractive shade;

indeed, there has never been a more varied array of shades, from petunia to a light scarlet, and from thence to a rich rose. The toes are more rounded and the heels of a slender style. Perhaps the neatest of court shoes is that having a line of - dark plum glace, threaded, as it were, around the edge of a chocolate-coloured calf shoe. By the way, the shops have recently displayed, and sold at very low prices, innumerable low-heeled shoes of the light beige leathers, and it may be taken as significant that the very low heels are departing to make way for those which are not quite so careless in effect. One cannot deny that the flat heel tends to give a very childish appearance to one’s dress scheme, and few will regret that the vogue is passing.