Boots, Walking

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31461, 30 August 1967, Page 3

Boots, Walking

This is the second of a series of articles on the recent Paris collections specially written for “The Press” by Miss Avice Bowbyes, lecturer in clothing and costume design at the Home Economics College, University of Guelph, Canada.

Boots now seem to be an accepted part of the fashion scene. They were shown in all but one of the recent Paris collections I saw. And they were as high and as tight as stockings. For 1967 they are made of stretch leather, vinyl or corfam. Corfam is a new synthetic by Du Pont. It looks like leather and it “breathes.” The materials used for boots are given stretch by cut-

ting them very thin and by bonding them to a stretch fabric. The boots go on like stockings, they are as tight as stockings, as soft as stockings and stocking high; hence the new fashion word, “stockingboot,” for the northern winter this year. These new high boots are available in Paris in black, beige, maroon and many other colours. Platform soles are

new, with square toes and broad strong heels. Capucci’s suede boots, in beige, green or navy blue, came from Italy and were among the prettiest I saw. On my last afternoon in Paris I went to see the collection of Balenciaga, master of design and cut This couturier, who made boots chic, had discarded them. There were no boots in his showing. Instead, his mannequins wore comfortable, broad, lowheeled Oxfords with thick soles. But they were made in the softest, most flexible kid imaginable. One pair of afternoon shoes was in fine suede with a buckle high on the instep.

Evening shoes were shown in the collections in lame, satin or velvet with rhinestone platform soles. Tortoiseshell buckles were often seen on suede shoes. Tortoiseshell is everywhere—real or imita-tion-used for bag handles, clasps and spectacle frames, as well as for shoe buckles.