Oh, the bliss of a kitten heel. Enough of a lift to add two inches of leg, which, not to tar the rest of you with my short brush, makes a significant difference. Enough “polish” (dreadful word, sorry) that you look “done” (again, yuck, but you know what I mean). And yet comfortable enough to wear all day, safe to cross the road at a clip when the lights are about to change without putting yourself in mortal peril, low-key enough that you don’t stimulate midlife crisis gossip in the office. What’s not to love?
Well, that’s exactly the problem. The kitten heel is a bit too nice. Too polite. It is easy and amenable, helpful and practical – the trophy shoe of duty, not dancefloors. (Not for nothing is it beloved of the royal family.) It lacks edge, which is exactly why the kitten heel fell from fashion favour a decade ago. And why its comeback, as declared by Vogue at the beginning of this year, is A Good Thing, but not quite as straightforward as you’d think.
The danger of the kitten heel’s comeback is that if you let it, it will unwittingly rewind your wardrobe clock to the early noughties. Let us be clear: the kitten heel is no excuse to pull out those trusty knee-length A-line skirts, the ones you wore for your Devil-Wears-Prada-lite big meeting look. And neither is it going to resuscitate those flattering draped-at-the-waist jersey dresses you used to wear at weekends. Nope. Sorry.
To make the kitten heel work this time around you need to think of it in a new way. So, you don’t wear it with knee-length skirts, ever. You can wear it with a midi-length skirt, but only if you wear, say, a sweatshirt or a statement-sleeved knit on the top half rather than a cute fitted cardigan. If you wear it with trousers, they should be cropped, so that the proportions are slightly gawky. Bonus points if the trousers appear to have been cropped with a pair of blunt scissors.
In other words, the new-wave kitten is not nearly so easy to wear. But get it right and it still punches above its weight (or rather, height) in its ability to elevate.
• Jess wears jumper, £28, next.co.uk. Jogging bottoms, £210, by MM6 by Maison Margiela, from matchesfashion.com. Kitten heels, £210, lkbennett.com.
Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Laurence Close at Carol Hayes Management.
