The "King of Shoes" failed, the transformation of light luxury, why were high heels abandoned by women
Leaving Shanghai and arriving at Haidian, another landmark in Beijing, the scene changes, which is a place where high heels are rarely seen. There are no SKP ladies and CBD elites, just countless code farmers and college students. Lack of fashion genes here, Haidian style is Beijing's own old money style, gorgeous small suits, LV bags and high heels, far less than black down jackets, teaching and auxiliary institutions canvas bags and flat shoes, such a wear, can find a comfortable balance between the chicken baby and the chicken itself.
Text: Zheng Sifang
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Dusty heels
More and more women are ditching high heels.
In March this year, Xu Min, who returned to his hometown to attend a friend's wedding, gave up high heels as the designated shoe for attending the wedding banquet and replaced them with a pair of Fila platform sneakers. For her, casual and comfortable platform shoes can not only "grow taller", but also comfortable to wear, compared to high heels.
The same goes for another bride, Chen Mei. When she was in school, she thought her future wedding shoes would be high heels studded with sparkling diamonds, but last year, a sports brand's silver-white sneakers became her go-to choice for her wedding dress.
The last time Xu Min wore high heels in her life was at the annual meeting of a fashion magazine in 2019, and before that, she hadn't touched them for three years. At that annual meeting, in order to match the skirt, she temporarily walked into H&M and bought a pair of stiletto heels for 79 yuan, which was just right for her to wear this time.
The thin heel of this pair of shoes is about 6 cm high, and the sole of the forefoot is extremely thin, because of this, the center of gravity of the wearer will habitually lean forward, and the more concentrated on the forefoot, the more pain the thin sole brings her.
▲ Photo / Visual China
But in the past, high heels were still a legend of urban women, and in the shaping of culture, they were endowed with many meanings, such as an adult symbol of moving from a girl to a woman, or a symbol of independence and strength in the workplace.
The first time Xu Min wore high heels was during the high school art exam, a pair of 8 cm high heels can make her look more upright. Until she graduated from college in 2014, she found that the girls around her almost always had to have a few pairs of high heels, if not 10 centimeters, but at least 5 centimeters.
The better-looking high heels are, the more "beautiful torture instruments" they are, which is almost a consensus. Someone concluded: climbing stairs, walking slopes, and diving puddles are the criteria for testing whether a pair of high heels are good or not. As a subject with a very high threshold, great exercise intensity, and a strong degree of war damage, most high-heeled shoes are discouraged from entering the school. It took many years for Xu Min to develop the ability to wear high heels and walk on the ground.
A more realistic factor is that high heels will educate every migrant worker who wears it to commute equally.
It can always be accurately stuck in every gap that can be stuck into, and high heels are once equated with social death for workers. No pair of stiletto heels will make it out of the subway, in the cracks in the floor, or in the manhole cover. Since stiletto heels are not suitable for commuting, block heels can also be applied, but in order to ensure comfort, even a smart urban beauty should always have a band-aid and casual shoes in her bag in case you need it.
As an important commuting tool, high heels are increasingly rare on the Beijing subway. The transfer here is complicated enough to cost anyone in high heels. Lin Zhi once wore high heels to take Line 10 to Guomao Station, and then changed to Line 4, two sections of transfer channels several hundred meters long, which made her regret it - after returning home, she took off her high heels, her feet were blistered in 6 places, and her ankles were also worn out. "The longest routine is the transfer road of the Beijing subway. ”
When it comes to the workplace, a pair of high heels may instantly penetrate the young person's sense of faith.
In November last year, Zhang Qi, a post-00 generation, was entrusted with an important task to participate in the production and business improvement competition of the head office, and the dress code for the competition required black pants, white shirts, and black leather shoes. For the sake of glamorous and decent on the surface, and the belief to be based on the workplace, Zhang Qi stepped on 5 cm high heels to speak PPT on stage, and the podium was only a few steps away from left to right.
▲ The high heels worn by Zhang Qi when he participated in the competition. Photo / Courtesy of the interviewee
"If I don't wear high heels, will I still be able to win an award?" Zhang Qi never knew the answer to this question, but it was certain that this was the first time she wore high heels, and it was also the last time, fortunately, the Dadong high heels bought for 79 yuan would not be too heartbreaking to eat ashes.
The physical and mental pain is one thing, and what really makes Xu Min and high heels officially say goodbye is the ebb and flow of fashion trends.
On a weekend in March, at 3 p.m., the best time for Beijing's Sanlitun hipsters to go out, the street photographers, the cooperating Internet celebrities and the passers-by are all indispensable scenery in Taikoo Li. According to statistics in the past, when the passenger flow of Taikoo Li Sanlitun was high, it averaged about 60,000 people per day. This is a fashion landmark in Beijing, and the outfits of hipsters also interpret the most popular styles of the moment to a certain extent, but most of them are sneakers, platform shoes, loafers, Mary Jane shoes, cave shoes, and even slippers. During the half hour of the crowd, we only found 7 women in high heels.
Three years after graduating from college, Xu Min found that the people who most often wore high heels around him had become micro-businesses and sales, and the high heels that young girls once loved had become the exclusive use of mothers in everyone's eyes, and even became synonymous with "exquisite soil".
The fate of high heels has long been hidden in a string of numbers. In 2018, the high-heeled market shrank by nearly $12 billion, accounting for less than 20% of footwear market sales and more than half of 2017. According to NPD Retail Tracking Service, U.S. heel sales in 2017 were down 11% from 2016.
Sneakers on high heels
The exit of high heels was due to a series of strong opponents.
2017 was a turning point in its fate, the originator of small white shoes, Adidas Stan Smith, exploded in that year, followed by many sports brands such as Nike and PUMA, as well as Alexander Mcqueen, GUCCI and other big brands without sports genes, have launched their own little white shoes. Back then, the little white shoes were once considered to be "whoever owns it, who embraces fashion", and after being mixed by the fashion industry, it seems that the world's sneakers are only white.
The fashion wind is always blowing in places you don't expect, just like we would never think that young people choose the shoes of the foot fitness old man between the cave shoes and the Birkenstocks. After broken shoes and ugly shoes, you can continue to use "disgusting outfits" to fight against the ubiquitous "beauty service".
If the popular "old man style" is young people's grasp of relaxation, then the birth of small white shoes is the originator of the relaxation dressing industry, pushing enough loose civilian fashion wear to the top, and also opening the fashion industry to the era of casual sneakers.
Whether it is flat shoes with more and more rich designs, or ugly sandals and dad shoes with a lot of limelight, women's choices of shoes have begun to become more diverse and more comfortable. Celebrities also take off their heels and put on sneakers on important occasions, such as Serena Williams who walked the red carpet of the Met Gala in sneakers.
▲Serena Williams wearing sneakers on the red carpet of the Met Gala. Diagram / Network
"Comfort" has become the basic need of consumers. The busier and faster the pace of life, the more you need a pair of comfortable and well-fitting shoes, which is suitable for women of all ages - those young people who have been repeatedly beaten by society have finally discovered that delicate suspension shuttling through the office building is work, and ordinary and down-to-earth is life, and for middle-aged people in the sandwich layer, instead of using a pair of high heels to make their already hard life worse, it is better to wear comfortable flat shoes to treat themselves.
The loss of high heels has been exchanged for the highly sought after sneakers. In 2018, Lyst, a fashion search platform, counted the most searched fashion items in the fourth quarter, and sneakers already occupied four of the top 10 spots.
Driven by a healthy lifestyle, the sports and fitness crowd continues to grow, and comfort has become the first choice for wear. For example, the corresponding to sneakers is yoga pants with the same sales and momentum. Bloggers who haven't switched into Lululemon yoga pants and casual shoes can't really be in line with the trend. In recent years, Archaeopteryx and Lululemon, which have become popular, have almost reversed the trend of daily wear, jackets and defined, and can also be new overalls for workers.
Wearing sports gear, you can go in and out of almost any occasion: on a date, shopping, walking the dog, exercising...... Yoga clothes, leggings and sneakers can occupy a large part of our daily lives, but if you wear high heels, you are only left with the embarrassment of being out of place.
Athleisure wear, can have such a trend, because traditional sports brands have been moving closer to the boundary of casual. For example, lululemon's dance studio cargo pants, Adidas' new sportswear collection, and 2024 Nike's new product features sweatshirts and pullovers, and it is difficult to distinguish which ones are sportswear and which ones are casual wear. Those potential consumer groups can span the sports circle and the life circle. But high heels are destined to serve only the aesthetics of a few.
This has also led to the fact that in most shopping malls in China, the prime position originally occupied by Belle and Daphne women has been gradually replaced by sports brands such as Fila and Lululemon in recent years.
And those fast fashion brands that focus on daily leisure have also turned to the sports field. For example, H&M Sport, Zara's sports line Athleticz, Uniqlo's Airism.
In 2022, H&M did H&M MOVE, which launched its sports line, offering a variety of yoga pants, sports vests, running gear, and more. In the same year, Zara launched "Athleticz" and a women's sports series for outdoor activities. UNIQLO's airism series, the products are mainly various types of underwear, T-shirts, pants, because of the main super quick drying, contact cold, super elasticity, breathable and not stuffy, etc., it has also become a cost-effective choice for fitness people.
▲ Japanese clothing brand UNIQLO store. AIRism sun-protective clothing. Photo / Visual China
Interestingly, fast fashion brands with declining performance can also achieve performance growth by leaning towards sports and leisure. For example, in 2021, after the performance of the American casual fast fashion brand Gap declined, its parent group, GAP Group, tilted a large amount of resources to Athleta, another women's sports and leisure brand, to stabilize the business situation.
These trends are illustrative: sneakers, which are stomping high heels under their feet.
When high heels become a value
Fashion trends are rooted in culture and influenced by values and geography.
In the early years, Cai Kangyong said that many girls around him have an incomprehensible preference for high heels. "It's like Big S, she walked into a shoe store and saw a pair of shoes she liked very much, as if she saw her name floating on the shoes. This preference once made high heels synonymous with feminine beauty and sensuality.
High heels, which are branded as women, are often associated with a "good image". In industries such as banks, airlines, hotels, and real estate, female workers are often required to wear high heels to work. However, with the awakening of women's consciousness in the past decade, many women have realized that the "beauty" that high heels can bring is also a kind of "beauty" from a male perspective. In 2019, Japanese model Yumi Ishikawa launched a campaign on Twitter called "KuToo" to rebel against unreasonable high heel culture, as there is an unwritten rule in Japan that women must wear strapless black heels in formal occasions such as the workplace.
If you want to find a city with a corresponding temperament for high heels, it must be Shanghai. In the movie "The Myth of Love", Shanghainese people always maintain a tone, and even the cobbler on the side of the road knows Jimmy Choo.
As many women's dream shoes, Jimmy Choo is the eponymous brand of Chinese designer Zhou Yangjie. Yangjie Chow designed hundreds of pairs of shoes for Princess Diana, and Jimmy Choo once became a symbol of the royal aristocratic circle. In 1999, at the Oscars, more than 50 actresses walked the red carpet wearing Jimmy Choo's high heels. Jimmy Choo is not only the red carpet battle zone for Hollywood actresses, but also the first choice for thousands of girls' wedding shoes.
Most people have heard at least two sentences about Jimmy Choo: "Every woman has at least one pair of Jimmy Choo in her life" and "From the first time you put on that pair of Jimmy Choo, you have sold your soul".
▲ Picture / "The Myth of Love"
But when I left Shanghai and arrived at Haidian, another landmark in Beijing, the scene changed, a place where high heels are rarely seen. There are no SKP ladies and CBD elites, just countless code farmers and college students. Lack of fashion genes here, Haidian style is Beijing's own old money style, gorgeous small suits, LV bags and high heels, far less than black down jackets, teaching and auxiliary institutions canvas bags and flat shoes, such a wear, can find a comfortable balance between the chicken baby and the chicken itself.
But even a noble man like Jimmy Choo had to make a change in order to please female clients who increasingly disliked wearing high heels.
Brands such as Jimmy Choo, Sergio Rossi, and Stuart Weitzman, known for their high heels, all saw a decline in shoe sales in 2020, and they had to adapt to market demand by developing sneakers and low-heeled shoes that were both beautiful and stylish, but also more comfortable. Take Christian Louboutin's sneakers embellished with metal studs, Roger Vivier's running shoes with the iconic square buckle, and Jimmy Choo's signature glitter inlays.
This is still the case for international brands, and domestic shoe companies are not doing well. In the era of offline retail dominance, Belle and Daphne are the absolute "shoe kings". At its peak, Belle had more than 10,000 stores nationwide, and Daphne expanded at a rate of nearly 1,000 stores per year, opening 6,881 stores nationwide in 2012.
However, in 2017, the "Shoe King" Belle was delisted, and Daphne closed the store urgently with an average annual number of more than 1,000. Those shoe companies that want to survive are also eagerly making adjustments. For example, traditional high heels are taking up a smaller and smaller proportion of stores, and are replaced by better-selling flats and athleisure shoes. Randomly walked into a Belle store, the most eye-catching C position when you entered the door, left for loafers and other casual leather shoes, and there were only a few pairs of high heels in the store, which were placed on the shelves in the back of the store.
▲Belle store. Photo / Visual China
A women's shoe practitioner who has been in the industry for ten years recalls that she has experienced four changes in the trend of the women's shoe industry. From 2014 to 2016, the sales of high heels were still the same as before, since 2017, small white shoes have become a must-have in every shoe store because of their versatility, freshness and comfort, in the past three years, loafers that are easy to put on and take off have become the most popular style in stores, and since last year, Mary Jane shoes have become the hottest items.
Fashion trends are constantly changing, and high heels are still not a popular category, but "it is true that fewer and fewer people are buying high heels, and customers generally have this demand for special occasions." At present, high heels account for only 10% of the shoes in her store.
In addition to women's shoe brands catering to the market and launching more styles of casual shoes, the heels themselves are also changing. Once upon a time, stiletto heels were synonymous with fashion, and pain was also the default price to pay for unlocking fashion. However, when shoes such as cave shoes, which prioritize the comfort of the foot, are recognized by mainstream fashion, the once "prickly beauty" becomes less necessary.
Even heeled brands are starting to take comfort into account. The first is that the heel area is enlarged, and the thick heels are visibly larger, and the second is that the sole is thickened to increase the comfort of the forefoot and arch.
In addition to the changes in the products themselves, some brands that started by relying on department store channels have also opened an online and offline collaborative business model in recent years. Daphne explores asset-light operation through licensing, simply put, it is the shoe version of "Antarctic Man", the difference is that Antarctic Man is a full-category authorization, while Daphne is a single license for footwear, and Daphne does not put eggs in one basket like Antarctic people, in addition to brand authorization, Daphne still maintains the sales business. After the transformation, Daphne in 2021 finally achieved a turnaround.
Since its privatization and delisting in 2017, Belle International has been split into Taobo International and Belle Fashion, and the sports business has also been divided into the former. Zhang Lei, founder of Hillhouse Capital, once said that Belle's sports shoes and clothing sales business is a high-quality asset, but it is dragged down by the women's shoes business, and the value is huge after the spin-off.
But the high heels that once helped Daphne and Belle go public and realized the dreams of countless girls, is its light really gone?
In fact, the stats for high heels aren't going down forever. Fashion is always a reflection of the current social mood, and the rise and fall of a single item is often closely related to the background of the times, and the same is true for high heels. According to a survey by IBM Global Enterprise Consulting Services in the United States, when the economic crisis was at its worst, women's consumption of high heels increased sharply, and they preferred the style with the highest heel. Because when the economy is down, consumer sentiment is generally sluggish, and walking in high heels must be upright, which invisibly improves the wearer's self-confidence, which is the so-called "high heel effect".
Sometimes, high heels can also be an option. Diana, who is 1.78 meters tall, gave up her beloved high heels in order to take care of Prince Charles's height, and after the relationship between the two broke down, Diana put on high heels again.
Whether it's heels or not, women should have the right to choose what to wear.
▲ Photo / Visual China
(The names of the interviewees in the article have been changed)
Resources:
[1]《"九亿少女"抛弃高跟鞋》ELLEMEN睿士
[2] "Sportswear, Uniqlo for Fitness People" GymSquare
[3] "How long can the "repet" high heels be popular?", WWD International Fashion News
The article is the original work of Daily People, and infringement must be investigated.