A tall order
When Bono belts out his song, Elevation, he might just be waxing poetic about something more than just a natural, ecstatic high. While known worldwide for his tinted shades, the philanthropist warbler may just be rocking another signature that not too many people know about, one that may be giving him a high in an entirely different way.
We’re talking heels, okay? Which the U2 lead has been spotted wearing more than just a couple of times. Shoes with extra-thick rubber soles on them. Bono may not be fashion icon fodder but a straight, sensible man who wears elevated shoes while meeting with nation leaders or appearing in paparazzi-buzzing events can make you seriously rethink stereotypes.
“Men in heels” doesn’t refer to cross-dressers in drag, a fake mole or Loubutin imitations anymore. Men who think they can gain from additional height are now stepping into a pair of heeled shoes for daily wear. They used to be called elevator shoes, back in the day of bellbottoms and Ziggy Stardust. The new term is “stacked heels,” wider, squarer heels that cover a lot more ground as opposed to skinny stilettos. And even straight men, aside from flamboyant rock stars, now wear them.
Tinseltown’s most famous vertically-challenged husband, Tom Cruise, wears them. If you’re only pushing 5’7” and your wife is 5’9” in her bare feet, it’s pretty tiring to be constantly on tiptoes to give wifey Katie Holmes a kiss in front of the cameras. Other heel-shodding red carpet walkers include Mel Gibson and Robert Downey, Jr., who was said to have paraded around the set of Iron Man 2 in pairs that looked as if they were zapped in from his glam-o-rama days of drugs and debauchery. Simon Cowell wears them too, proving that the most acerbic wit can only be a cover-up for intense vanity.
Even state leaders are not indifferent to the pull of an artificial high. Nicolas Sarkozy and his supermodel wife have a four-inch height difference between them — so she’s not the one wearing the heels in the family. France’s head of state has been photographed wearing stacked pairs with his conservative suits, while Carla Bruni sticks to closed-toe flats.
Cowboys have been wearing them for years and do you really see anybody LMAO-ing when these ranch studs start to steer in the cattle in their elevated boots? At least urbanites don’t have to put up with those ridiculous spurs.
Actually they don’t have to put up with anything too extraordinary or far-out. Heels for men in the local market are very rare; actually, only one store, Bradford, has gone ahead and dedicated nearly an entire store to elevating the vertically challenged man (they also have a few high sneakers for women). And what Bradford has got is how Sarkozy, and not Austrian fashion-phile Brüno, would define heels for men.
Sleek loafers and even sleeker lace-ups are part of the array. They even have casual sneakers. And each pair promises an instant raise of at least one and a half inches to as much as four inches. The higher pairs, however, don’t look anything like what Marc Jacobs made his male mannequins wear in a 2008 collection. (The designer himself stepped out in a pair of very masculine stacks come curtain call.) Bradford has come up with a technology that inserts height increasers inside the shoe, so what looks like a two-inch heel actually makes you four inches taller.
Nobody is expecting man heels to become the trend du jour anytime soon. These fill in a need, more than anything else. And while men in heels may raise some brows with the more conservative set, they are a whole lot more palatable than man leggings. Or man boobs.
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Bradford is located at SM Mall of Asia, TriNoma and Festival Mall.
