A few days ago I was rushing around Glasgow’s Buchanan Street and saw a little girl walking hand in hand between her parents. She was wearing a red jacket, white trousers and red patent shoes and she was tremendously stylish. The temptation of taking a picture was great, but I didn’t want them to think I was a paedophile, so I avoided taking my camera out of my bag. Once I arrived home, though, thinking about the little girl’s shoes reminded me of a very different and rather disturbing pair of shoes, the ones in the film Bunhongsin (The Red Shoes, 2005) by Kim Yong-gyun. 
This film is actually inspired by Japanese and Korean stories and horror films mixed with Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale The Red Shoes and the Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger ballet film of 1948. Yong-gyun’s film starts with a shot of a platform edge in an empty subway station on which a pair of beautiful pink shoes (yes, they’re pink in this film) is sitting. It seems someone has abandoned them and a student decides to pick them up and take them home. A friend sees her, reclaims the shoes for herself and walks away wearing them. After a few seconds the girl seems to be invested by a flash, a dark figure and the next thing the camera frames is the girl sitting on the floor, her legs severed below the calf. The main story develops from here. The plot involves a middle-class woman who leaves her husband after his infidelity and moves to a tiny apartment with her young daughter Tae-Soo. The woman finds the “red” shoes on a train and takes them home. As soon as she sees her mother wearing the shoes, Tae-Soo becomes obsessed with them. After a visiting friend steals the shoes and she is found dead with her severed feet and missing shoes, more supernatural events develop, with the shoes unleashing their psychological and destructive power. 
In the film wearing the red shoes means stealing someone else’s identity, but the story also touches upon the themes of fashion and desirable objects. Red shoes have often been considered as iconic accessories as the court shoes designed by Salvatore Ferragamo for Marilyn Monroe in Howard Hawkes’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes prove.
For their Spring/Summer 2004 “The Red Shoes” collection, Viktor & Rolf explored the theme of the opposites by juxtaposing evening gowns and smoking jackets, delicate silk and tulle dresses with trousers. Each outfit was also twinned with a different pair of red shoes, from stilettos to slingbacks. The red shoes and the catwalk soundtrack featuring hits such as “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” reminded of the ruby slippers designed by Gilbert Adrian and made by Salvatore Ferragamo for Judy Garland in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. 
Next year it will be the film’s 70th anniversary and for this special occasion, a group of selected designers – among them A. Testoni, Abaeté, Alberta Ferretti, Betsey Johnson, Botkier, Christian Louboutin, Diane von Furstenberg, Giuseppe Zanotti, Jimmy Choo, L.A.M.B. by Gwen Stefani, Lisa Pliner, Manolo Blahnik, Moschino, Oscar de la Renta, Roger Vivier, Sergio Rossi, Stuart Weitzman, Tibi and Tuleh – are going to reinterpret Dorothy’s glittering red slippers. Some designers opted for slippers in leather, snakeskin and crocodile, others turned the infamous Dorothy shoes into stilettos or boots, adding polka dots and tulle bows here and there.
The Wizard of Oz Ruby Slipper Collection will appear at different events such as fashion shows in New York, and two pairs of each shoe will be produced for an auction that will benefit the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.
Who knows what Salvatore Ferragamo would have said about this very special collection of Dorothy-inspired shoes. What’s certain is that, though these commemorative red slippers will not be as destructive as the pink pair in Yong-gyun’s film, they will be desperately covetable, exactly like the ones in the film.
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