Coco Chanel wasn’t just the great catalyst for change in women’s fashion in the 20th century, she was also its most subversive figure. Mischievous and always out to shock, she simplified female dress by ignoring what women thought they wanted and giving them what she knew they should have: a new dress code based, of all things, on the way men dressed. It was a sensational move, considered revolutionary when she made it in the 1920s.
Chanel knew better than any woman how to use men she had affairs only with those who were rich and powerful enough to further her ambitions. Just as she knew which ones to pick, she knew what to take from their wardrobes in order to create clothes for the modern, independent, radical woman. The classic 1950s two-tone Chanel shoe simple, elegant and refined derived from the male co-respondent shoe, the footwear of the rake and the bounder (exactly the sort of louche Flash Harry who ended up as a co-respondent in society divorces).
That is why she chose it. Chanel always wanted women to be as boldly predatory and sexually carefree as men, and the two-tone shoe was her way of not just telling them, but giving them the confidence to go out and get what they wanted. Both racy and stylish, it was a triumph of modern design semantics. By rights, it should be featured in every design museum in the world as an example of a perfect shoe that has not only lasted for decades this year sees its 50th anniversary but become a timeless classic.