Deathly Hallows

Just passing by home between one trip and another. This feeling of unstableness, and the reading of last Harry Potter (how do you translate Deathly Hallows?) leads to some strange thoughts and memories.
Imaginary and unuseful objects, magical or cursed objects, objects that bring good or bad luck, objects that establish a link with the past, the future or with another world.
I designed this stiletto phone a few years ago for a Russian footwear firm, that was looking for something special as a present for their customers. I don't know if they're still on business, their web site is down. They didn't pay for the drawings anyway.
I knew that the idea itself wasn't completely new, nevertheless I was surprised to find this picture of Imelda Marcos, the world's best-known shoe collector, handling a similar high heel phone.
Leaving again tomorrow to the seaside, have a nice holiday everybody.

The Way We Were

I discovered a web service which is useful and impressively big. It's the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, a sort of time machine allowing to see how the web was in the past, going back until 1996. The service is also linked with the great Library of Alexandria, Egypt, and contains the time archives of whichever web site, for a total of 55 billion pages.
If you are interested in the history of STYLETTOS Italy you will find that, since the amateur beginnings in 2002, many new contents were developed but the style of the site, essential and a little severe, didn't change much.

India Connection

Some time ago, I was in touch with a manufacture company from New Delhi, and we were planning to produce an embroidered boot more or less like this. Then I thought that it was too complicated to send the pieces to India for the embroidery and then have them back for further workings, so we made nothing. I also remember that the Indian mate doubted that "the market would accept this idea". Just have a look at these velvet boots from Sergio Rossi Fall-Winter 2005 collection, modeled by beautiful Adriana Lima, don't you think they look gorgeous? Just in case you are planning to buy them, consider that they are sold for $3,000 in the US, don't know how much in Italy.

Why This Site, Why This Blog

From now on, also STYLETTOS Italy has its own blog. I began to attend the blogosphere, and I realised that interesting and innovative things are emerging between all the blah-blah. What is impressing in the first place is the size of the phenomenon, nearly 27 million blogs online and about 2 billion links (Technorati data), 700,000 posts and 70,000 new blogs every day, and who knows how much more underground stuff.

This site could not remain outside from such a lively and continuously evolving reality. By now the blog is only a substantial reply of the old "Why this site" page, supplying information and clarifications about the development and the history of STYLETTOS Italy, but it is obvious that this section will have to take its independent route, still to be invented.

I'm eagerly waiting for comments and suggestions, otherwise what a blog is it?

Original 3D Models

As I said before, these wonderful shoes are not for sale. This is the text that is normally sent to people asking directions about ordering: "STYLETTOS Italy is still mostly a graphic design project. Only a few sample series were produced till now, but they are sold out at the moment. Further production is not planned in the short term. Thank you anyway for your interest and appreciation, always welcome, and stay tuned with this web site for new models and features." Eventual collaboration or development proposals are always carefully considered, but at the moment I'm more inclined to take advantage of this web site and three-dimensional software potentialities, rather than to face the problems implied in footwear production and commerce.

Before somebody asks, I'll give a few technical details about my digital models. They've been developed using only AutoCAD and a few custom made Visual Basic routines. Neither 3DS or Maya, nor any post-editing with Photo Shop or other similar programs, just rendered images taken from my models. I never published the software I invented, but some of the digital models are on sale through Viewpoint catalog, now Digimation catalog.

An important feature, allowing to fully appreciate models' tridimensional nature, is the Experience! section, that can be reached from the home page. It's about impressive interactive animations that can be activated installing Viewpoint Media Player plug-in. You will be able to zoom and rotate models ad libitum observing them in smallest details and even diving into them, try and see (a broadband connection works better).

Google AdSense and STYLETTOS Italy

But now a good piece of news: I finally found the way to monetise this web site adequately. I don't even remember where I got the idea, I tried to place Google Ads on the site and I discovered that IT WORKS! I can make in one week more than I earned in three years with other affiliate programs. And this I believe without weighing too much on this site's character, but on the contrary adding useful and interesting contents and features.

It is to be admitted that whoever invented this is a genius, those Google guys found the Columbus' egg, or if you prefer the chicken with the golden eggs. The idea is simple and brilliant at the same time: after creating a search engine which everybody must pass, and setting up a system that displays ads that are relevant with the search, they extended this system to third parties, addressing to every single web page and blog that signs-up with the program the most appropriate ads in a completely automated way. Doing so Google encourages web sites development, redistributing to the publishers part of the revenues, which are paid by the advertisers with an auction system that is quite complex and fully automated as well.

It's a milestone of a new age: somebody perfectly understood Internet's nature, which is not one-to-many but many-to-many communication, and found the way to intercept this traffic for commercial purposes with efficient services and a sophisticated artificial intelligence technology. Try and see, just browse the pages of this site to realise that the addressing can get on every page the most relevant ads, even if there is still some weird combination. The system is pay-per-click and these ads are very likely to be visited and so to bring revenues, because they just comply with what visitors are looking for. In my opinion the main advantage of Google AdSense, compared with usual affiliate programs, is that you don't need that the visitor buys something to get the commission. It's more or less as being paid just to bring people window-shopping.

A True Italian Story

Sorry for the Berlusconi-like title, nothing in common. After four years maybe it's time to make a little history and a summary of this meritorious activity. Around year 2001, using my skill and experience in CAD, I started designing the first pair of slip-on shoes. It was just for hobby, but in the end they looked cool to me, so I decided to publish them, and then this web site was set up since may 2002. Due to the remarkable success, I was convinced that there could be a market, and by the end of 2003 I prepared a collection of samples of boots and pumps, thanks to a firm from Parabiago (nearby Milan), which, after some insistence, sent me the goods "on one's word". You can see these gorgeous models on the cover from my home page. Unfortunately the first customer, this not Italian but Mexican, turned out to be a professional swindler and paid with a check that in the end proved to be false.

Although I keep receiving e-mails asking how to order these shoes, I could never sell a pair via Internet, nor find a shop or a distributor seriously interested in retailing them. I sold the remaining pairs to friends and relatives. The firm that produced the samples, by unanimous consent of excellent quality, was owned by Finpart financial group (holding brands like Cerruti, Frette, Moncler, Marina Yachting, Andrea Pfister and Colette). This holding went recently bankrupt, leaving a hundreds million gap, with accusations of rigging the market and fraudulent bankruptcy, and dragged in the storm also the Banca Popolare of Intra, that "generously" lavished its subscribers' money to knit the accounts. Probably those qualified craftsmen that made my shoes (which however I regularly paid for) are now unemployed. The usual "tricky guys of the neighbourhood" made other innocent victims. Another well known story, a true Italian story.

Not Just Another Shoe Site

Many years ago, when I started surfing the web, I remember I tried to type "high heels" in Altavista, and, to my surprise, I discovered a world, a large community of people sharing the same interest for shoes. I read somewhere a statistics according to that fetish sex is one of Internet's most popular topics in the field of softcore porn. After all, also the success of this site demonstrate this. I've lost count of shoe web sites. Either fetish oriented or just fashionable there must be thousands. STYLETTOS Italy Portal, now a recognized and appreciated resource, collects all the best links in the field. I started some time ago with a short selection, then, due to good response, the page has been constantly widened, to the extent of a true branch encyclopedia, divided into three pages. Designers' page has always been the most comprehensive.

The original idea by STYLETTOS Italy was that of creating a bridge between fashion and fetish world, but nowadays there's not a big difference between fetish sex shops and fashion designers' sites, and these ones realise sometimes even better the most extreme voyeuristic fantasies.

I think this web site is different from all the others. Not because it's not voyeuristic (in fact it is very much) but here you won't find something you can see in every other shoe site: real shoes. The main feature of this site is a gallery of snapshots taken from the digital models I made. But looking carefully you'll find also REAL shoes...

Magnificent Obsession

Probably, at least here in Italy, spiked heels aren't trendy anymore, just look around in the streets and you will realize that the mass phenomenon characterizing these last few years is now dripping. Also STYLETTOS Italy corrected its route, if before the claim was "every woman on stiletto heels" now we drifted toward less aggressive, even if equally evocative, shapes. What is not over is the cult of footwear, the search for a model that is exclusive and original, or maybe also apparently equal to any other, but with that something more, that can renew a woman's look by itself, even with used dressing or ordinary jeans.

Women spend fortunes to get the last designer pumps or boots, and every fashionable girl has her closet full. All editorials and comments you find in fashion magazines underline the importance of these so-called accessories, new brands and shops come out everyday, and this is not only here in Italy, the boot-shaped country. The epidemics is now spreading all over the world like an infectious disease.

Maybe someone happened to see the movie "In her shoes", representing a competitive and problematic relationship between two sisters (Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette) different in everything but for the passion, common to many others, for brand name shoes by cult designers like Jimmy Choo or Manolo Blahnik, already famous all over the planet after the television series "Sex & the City ".

And what about men? Nobody should think that the cult of women's shoes even as sexual objects is less common among men. The obsession for women's footwear is a serious matter, and for many a compulsive feeling, almost a kind of addiction. Maybe somebody else can remember the final scene in "There is something about Mary", by chance with Cameron Diaz again, where the perennially rejected lover (Chris Elliot) tries to steal main character's footwear collection.