August 12, 2005

Shoes, a Love Story

Loeffler Randall

Fashion cliche #243: Women are obsessed with great shoes.

Fashion cliche #244: Men are obsessed with women in great shoes.

Still. Every cliche has an element of truth, and the ultimate iteration of the man-woman-shoe love triangle may be Loeffler Randall, a gorgeous new shoe collection created by husband-and-wife team Brian Murphy and Jessie Randall.

They’re impossibly beautiful. Undeniably cool. And incredibly stylish. (The people as well as the shoes.) But don’t hold that against them. They’re also incredibly qualified: Randall spent years designing for Banana Republic and Katayone Adeli; Murphy is an award-winning art director. They shot the first catalog in their Brooklyn apartment. They even got their dog Romeo to model.

The shoes, which we first saw in prototype last fall and have been dying to write about since, are feminine and polished but in no way prissy. (Which means they can go from twinset to hoodie.) And they may look vintage, but there’s nothing old-fashioned about them. Liv and Harriet are snakeskin-embossed pumps. Birgit and Ulla are darling ballet flats. And Elka is the most badass boot of the season.

As for Brian and Jessie, well, at this point, we’ve run out of adjectives.

Available at Bergdorf Goodman, 754 Fifth Avenue, at 57th Street (212-753-7300). To see styles, go to loefflerrandall.com. Also available online at shopbop.com.