Amazingly, the forces of nature sometimes prove more powerful than the forces of fashion. Take the Demise of the High Heel, which despite enthusiastic encouragement from some designers on the catwalk is taking an awfully long time to come about. But a few flakes of snow, a smattering of black ice and the nation’s womanhood runs for cover, preferably one lined with sheepskin and with a nice flat, grippy sole.
This, on many levels, is right and seemly. However, it does raise — repeatedly — a mystifying question: why do warmth and traction have to be so darn ugly? But looked at from another way, perhaps they’re not ugly, merely a new kind of beauty? You see, a comfy boot can pierce the heart of one of the biggest philosophical issues in civilisation.
And here’s another philosophical humdinger: could the Ugg have met its Waterloo? With the landscapes of Britain turning into one giant snowy Richard Curtis set, a footwear battle is unfolding on our streets. After years of supremacy, Ugg has a rival, or at least a David-sized pretender. The Snugger winter collection of Fitflop boots — an oxymoron so perplexing to those not versed in the extensive lexicon of fashion oxymorons that it can induce headaches — has sold more than 80,000 pairs in the UK since its launch in September; 200,000 worldwide. It’s the Jets and the Sharks all over again, but with sheepskin.
Within the Snugger collection are the Mukluk, the Inuk and the Shakoha styles. The latter, which was dreamed up by the American designer Anna Sui (and recommended on these very pages a while back) sold out within hours of going on netaporter.com in November. There is some way to go before it conclusively hammers the Ugg, of which 24 million pairs a year are produced, but where the Ugg creates a sofa environment for the feet in which puffy flesh is encouraged to spread into the soft, fleecy environs of the sole, like over-ripe Brie, the Fitflop boot installs a gym environment where puffiness is jovially but firmly discouraged. In that crucial quest for thin everything, including feet, the Fitflop boot has a built-in advantage.
This is because its designers, the beauty entrepreneur and former personal trainer Marcia Kilgore and Dr David Cook, a biomechanist at London South Bank University worked on technology to make the Fitflop boot’s sole work like a wobble board, to keep the foot in perpetual motion. According to thousands of testimonials on the website, this can help to alleviate backache, bunions and — this is the deal-closer for thousands of women — cellulite. While it ill behoves this column to favour one child over another (what am I saying? it’s called exercising critical judgment), the Fitflop boot also offers the pronating foot more support than the average Ugg, so that even walking to the bus offers the illusion that it’s vaguely compensating for all those missed gym sessions. Anyway, demand is so high that staff orders for the Sui boot have been cancelled.
Of course, if you really want to support abused feet in this blissful hiatus before we all strap ourselves into our platforms again, you need to traverse into the realm of orthotics — made-to-measure sole inserts that can be used in all your footwear, to realign your arches. While these don’t permanently correct feet, they improve your gait significantly while you’re wearing them. They also cost upwards of £250 . . .
Meanwhile, the cosy, jolie-laide field of footwear is filling up. There are Mou’s ethical sheepskin and goatskin candidates, and Celtic Sheepskin boots (very similar to Uggs but cheaper, they used to have the UK licence for Uggs), and many more alternatives (pictured here). Like the Ugg, and the FitFlop boot, they all have that important wintery, Australian-granny factor. They’re not hideous — Kilgore says that she hates ugly shoes: “Next season we’re working on a Fitflop wedge” — but they’re not exactly elegant or conventionally pretty either. Still, if George Michael can roam the land looking suspiciously as though he’s had a Brazilian on his chin and nobody tries to section him, that tells you something. And what it tells you is this: conventionally pretty is so last week.
To find out where to buy Discount Ugg Boots visit our's Website Cheap Ugg Boots Online and contact us for more information.