On a hunch, I looked her up and made a cold call. Sure enough, she remembered every detail of the paper dress fad from the mid 1960s, and relayed several interesting stories and a few opinions on the topic. She was a delight to talk to and I hoped that some day we would meet. So I was saddened to find out she passed away a few months ago.

Joyce Carter, born in 1930 in Toronto, worked as a journalist for the Kitchener Waterloo Record in the early 1950s where her knowledge of sewing and textiles resulted in her becoming their fashion writer. After winning a Judy Award (Canada’s fashion industry awards) for promoting Canadian fashion, Carter was offered a fashion writer’s job at the Globe and Mail in Toronto. Her first byline appeared on November 14, 1962.

She became known for reporting fashion from a journalistic approach – about the business of fashion and how it worked, rather than just which celebrity wore what. Carter didn’t believe advertisers should be able to buy their way into editorial copy. And, despite the nature of fashion being about novelty and change, alerted readers to fads and styles she felt were wastes of time, like paper dresses and midi-skirts. Carter was particularly fond of Italian fashions and was a favourite reporter of Giorgio Armani who granted her special access to preview his collections.

Carter was named Woman of the Year by Fashion Canada in 1981, an association that promoted Canadian designs. She retired in the early 1990s and died November 3, 2011.

 A friend sent me a link to Boingboing that featured an image of a moonshiner’s shoe from 1922. The May 27, 1922 issue of The Evening Independent had a story about moonshiners wearing shoes designed to leave cow hoof tracks rather than footprints to trick police from finding where they had stashed their stills. This isn’t the first time such shoes were made. I have seen Dutch clogs with heels carved at the toe so they leave backwards prints, and shoes with horseshoes on the soles, made for the intention of deceiving followers.

Julia, I mean Dr. Pine, curated Fashionality: Dress and Identity in Contemporary Canadian Art - an exploration of how apparel and the act of adornment is used by 23 active Canadian artists in their work. The exhibition is divided into four general themes:

The first theme is about the art of creating. My favourite was a wall of clothing made and worn by artist Nathalie Purschwitz who, like the woman who cooked her way through Julia Child’s recipes, blogged about everything she made and wore for one year – nothing she wore was made by anyone but her, from shoes to sunglasses.

The second part of the exhibition examines clothing and the life cycle. A stunning wall mural of hundreds of tiny knitted sweaters, entitled Lost Boys, is a poignant tribute to fallen soldiers of the First World War. The artist Michele Karch-Ackerman continues to add to this piece, in fact if you want to help, click on her name to learn how to volunteer to make more of these sweaters.

The third element of the show looks at fashion. This is perhaps the most traditional approach within the exhibition consisting mostly of sketches, paintings and photographs. I was drawn in particular to some eye-catching photographs taken of chiffon and tulle dresses frozen within blocks of ice. Nicole Dextras is the artist who has created these hauntingly beautiful sculptures that she photographs for posterity before they melt.

The finale looks at identity. At one end of the gallery there is a three-story red plaid lumberjack shirt and at the other, a cover of ‘Cosmosquaw’ but in between are some of the works of Kent Monkman. Monkman adeptly uses humour to express his Native and sexual identity through a variety of artistic forms. One of his many genres are paintings done in the style of 19th century artists of Native life, like Kreighoff and Rindisbacher, but when you look closely you realize the ‘noble savages’ are in high heels! Probably my favourite piece was the ‘LV’ quiver, but there was also a dream-catcher bra that ran a close second.

I recommend Fashionality – it’s a great complimentary exhibition to the traditional Canadian school of art that makes up the balance of the McMichael art collection. The exhibition will be on display until September 3.

Perugia patent for hollowed out wedge heel, 1940

White patent leather faux croc vamp with gold wedge heel, c. 1965

Andre Perugia is unquestionably the most inventive shoe designer of the 20th century. His 3 1/2 year design patent for a novelty wedge shoe was granted in 1940. The actual shoe shown here is from about 25 years later and not by Perugia, but it uses the same design idea for the heel.

When Royal Decrees go wrong... shoe buckles and side hoops were decreed in England to be worn at court after they had fallen from fashion in the 1790s. The resulting fashions looked silly with high waists and wide skirts held out by pannier as seen in this Feb 1, 1797 fashion plate by Heideloff

Charles Barnett, who is the face of these royal decrees for Ascot, has said: ”We have worked extensively with experts in the world of fashion to define better what formal dress means, with the overarching intention of being as helpful as possible to our visitors and assisting everyone in understanding what is expected and, we believe, cherished about the dress code at Royal Ascot… It isn’t a question of elitism and not being modern in a world where there is less and less requirement to dress smartly – far from it. We want to see modern and stylish dress at Royal Ascot, just within the parameters of formal wear, and the feedback we have received from our customers overwhelmingly supports that.”

The new rules define that miniskirts and fascinators are out. All skirts within the Royal Enclosure must be at the top of the knee or lower and a hat must have a minimum 4 inch width. Men within the Royal Enclosure must appear in morning dress with vest, black or grey top hat, black shoes, and a tie, not, ironically, an ascot (cravat). Within the larger Grandstand Enclosure, the rules are a more relaxed where fascinators and cravats are allowed, although strapless dresses and bare midriffs are sensibly not permitted.

Ascot's rules for 2012 define a fascinator as a headpiece with a base of less than 4 inches. This example is borderline...

On the one hand people need rules for how to dress because without them you end up with theatre patrons in tube tops and flip flops, Marc Jacobs in a lace dashiki, and desperately ambitious starlets in micro-mini evening gowns without undies and their tits hanging out.

However, some of the rules defined by Buckingham Palace for Ascot seem peculiarly specific and rigid. In fact the ‘No Fascinators’ rule seems directly aimed at the Duchess of Cambridge who made the fashion popular in the year or so before her marriage to Prince William. I also can’t fathom why there would be a problem with an ascot cravat, especially considering the tie was named after the race!

Sassoon cut, from HairDo magazine, June 1966

It’s sad to see the end of a legend, and Vidal Sassoon was certainly a legend in his time. Sassoon revolutionized women’s hairdressing in the 1960s. Just when hair was at its height of teased up-dos, lacquered into place with cans of hairspray, Sassoon introduced sharp, short haircuts with geometric angles. His cuts were made famous by models, actresses, and fashion leaders like: Peggy Moffit, Mary Quant, Mia Farrow, Nancy Kwan, and Grace Coddington.

Sassoon was born in London on January 17, 1928 and raised in poverty, which included a seven-year stay in a Jewish orphanage because his mother couldn’t afford to raise him after his father abandoned the family.

Sassoon trained at a famous London hairdresser’s salon before going out on his own in the mid 1950s. His Bond Street salon was unisex – a revolutionary idea at the time that changed the industry. In 1957 he cut Mary Quant’s hair for the first time, nicking her ear with the scissors in the process. In 1963, he created his iconic, five-point-cut. It was in synch with Sixties modernism and paired well with space age miniskirts and go-go boots.

In 1965, he opened his first salon in New York and a few years later moved to the U.S. with his second wife (from 1967 to 1980), Canadian-born actress Beverly Adams. It was during this time in the 1970s that Sassoon built his empire of hair and skin products that were sold under the slogan ‘If you don’t look good, we don’t look good”.

Sassoon sold the rights to his name in 1982, which were bought up by Procter & Gamble in 1985. A movie about his career was released in 2010, around the same time that rumours surfaced he was suffering from leukemia. He died May 9 in his Los Angeles home.

Fuchsia suede platform mule, c. 1947-1950, by Palter De Liso

I can understand legal protection of trademark names and logos, and I can even understand protection of a technological development, but I don’t think elements of design, like quilted leather or contrast piping, should be copyrightable. Fashion, design, and art is all about copying, building upon previous ideas, changing and altering things to make them ‘au courant’.

Gucci shoe, 2011, design inspired by Palter De Liso

With that in mind, I am delighted to see that Gucci was inspired by a pair of Palter De Liso shoes from the late 1940s that appeared in my book The Seductive Shoe.  The designer has adjusted the style for today’s tastes, making the heel taller, straighter, and slimmer, and the colour darker.

Thanks to my latest favourite blog Paddock who discovered the Gucci version and remembered the shoes in my book.

The costumer Annie Symons, and make-up and hairstylist Donald McInnes, did amazing jobs of recreating the neo-Romantic club scene of the early 1980s. I was never into the full-out New Wave lifestyle, other than donning a 60′s suit, winklepickers, and a bit of eyeliner on occasion, but I do remember seeing the beehive, pirate-shirt wearing types bundled together at one end of the bar in various Vancouver clubs in the early 1980s.

In an interview with George O’Dowd by BBC TV blogger Fiona Wickham in May 2010, shortly after the film debuted in Britain, George said “They’ve really got the clothing right and there are characters who are based on people who were around at that time and they’ve got their looks completely perfect.”

Annie Symons, who usually does contemporary wardrobe for BBC television shows, did an exceptional job and received two well-deserved awards for her costuming of this film. If you want to see what the New Wave club scene was like at its nth degree, I highly recommend this film.

Advertisement from U.S. Vogue, March 1985. The boot by the model's face is the same as the pair in white at right.

Between 1981 and 1989 Gaetano Bonifacio imported Italian footwear into the U.S. under the label El Vaquero.

Available through 150 retailers, mostly in and around New York and Los Angeles as well as through the department store Neiman Marcus, the label was suspended in 1989 when Bonifacio and his wife divorced, but was revived in 1992.

Black patent leather pumps with white pinstripe, heels, and large buckle, c. 1967, by Dan Berk for Joseph Magnin

Chicago shoe designer Dan Berk grew up in the shoe business – his father was a shoe retailer, his brother a shoe manufacturer. Berk was a salesman for his brother’s firm when he decided he would rather design than sell shoes. When the firm Andrew Geller was looking for a new designer in 1956, Berk applied for the job, but another designer was hired. However, Berk was asked if he would like to design a new line of daytime shoes for the company called ‘Gamins’. Berk was its designer for 10 years before leaving to begin his own line under the Dan Berk label. His shoes were aimed at “sophisticated women, not kooky kids” he said in October 1966 when he launched his spring 67 collection at the Chicago national shoe fair. His longevity as a shoe designer or his whereabouts after 1967 are unknown…