Thursday, June 2, 2011

Kobi Levi: Shoe Art Extraordinaire!


I just came across this talented, inventive shoe designer artist.                     



  His name is Kobi Levi and he is Israeli.  If you like shoes you will flip when you see the virtual shoe museum site and it's hundreds of pairs of unusual shoes.  He also has a blog.   Shoes are classified by style, material, concept etc.  There is even shoe jewelry, furniture, sculpture and other objects.  Kobi has been very busy and his designs are hallucinatory!    And apart from the sculpture shoes, they are all wearable.... carefully created to fit the human foot. 

www.virtualshoemuseum.com/vsm/r.php?col=person... -



                             


 Some of them are ugly/wonderful and I would love to display them along with the rest of                      my collection of great shoes.


                                                                    Laundry baskets?



                                                                   Caddies ?


                      Although Kobi designs all sorts of shoes, his high heels are the stars of his repertoire.  I have always been interested in high shoes, as art and sometimes I even wear them!  It is irresistible to have the perspective that you get by being a few inches taller.  And of course the illusion of long legs is always flattering to the form.

   High heels, of course, were once worn by both men and women, usually of the upper classes for distinction and by the lower for practicability.  For example Egyptian butchers on murals from 3500 BC are depicted as wearing high clogs to keep dry from the blood of dead beasts!.

                                                                These are called Miao



                                                   These are christened: Blonde Ambition


Mallard

                                                                 Here is part of the bird series:


Swan

Toucan

              
 Here is interesting excerpt from wikipedia about high heels which are always a topic of debate among feminists:

 The history of the high-heeled shoe, or a shoe whose heel is higher than the toe, is a matter of contentious and heated discussion. Shoes in general have typically served as markers of gender, class, race, and ethnicity—and both the foot and the shoe have been imbued with powerful phallic and fertility symbols as evidenced in the contemporary practice of tying shoes to a newlywed couple's car.


No other shoe, however, has gestured toward leisure, sexuality, and sophistication as much as the high-heeled shoe. Fraught with contradiction, heels paradoxically inhibit movement in order to increase it, at least in appearance.


 Standing in heels, a woman presents herself already half-walking while at the same time reducing the length of her step, fostering the illusion of speed while suggesting an imminent fall. The higher and more unstable the heel, the more clearly these contradictions are expressed (Kunzle, 2004).


 Doctors and scholars alike have argued about the physical and cultural effects, both positive and negative, that heels have had not only on women, but on society as a whole.




I can only say that I am still enamored with high shoes and have worn many in my day. The ones of these last seasons though are the most dangerous ones I have come across.  Risk of falling, discomfort or impracticability does not hinder the sales or wearing of these alarmingly high shoes. It takes a special talent to even walk in them.  Which makes it all the more intriguing  as a social phenomenon.  

 But I digress again..... back to master wizard, Kobi Levi


Now how do these work?  

                                                 This pair should be called "Mick" as in Jagger.

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