Toronto: Everlasting love affair

Hilly Yeung's "Givenchy"

Shoes have become one of the most sought after fashion items on the runway. Women have been known to spend $14,000 on a pair of Manolo Blahnik alligator boots. Sex and The City even dedicated an entire episode, “A Woman’s Right to Shoes,” to Carrie’s relationship with her designer heels. So perhaps women barbarically wrestling one another over a pair of Pucci boots in Confessions of a Shopaholic may not be so unbelievable after all?

When it comes to our love affair with footwear, not even death will part us it seems. At Fashion No-no (to March 8, free, York Quay Centre, 235 Queens Quay W., harbourfrontcentre.com), Hilly Yeung‘s “Objects to Die For” immortalizes our romance with designer heels. Comprised of intricate paper sculptures of designer footwear, the collection is a reference to an ancient, traditional Chinese ritual where paper replicas of material possessions are burned as offerings to accompany loved ones into the afterlife. Surely, nothing says I love you like a pair of Givenchy heels.

The clever title doubles as a comic commentary on our devotion to vanity. Be it a bruised ankle or the hospitalized models slipping off runways in towering Prada heels, designer shoes are quite literally objects to die for.

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