Feel Dubai at your feet...literally...with these shoes

Feel Dubai at your feet…literally…with these shoes

Ever imagined what kind of shoe Dubai would be? Niether did we. But we don’t have to NOT wonder anymore because premium footwear brand John Lobb has just done that for us.

October 16, 2011 3:26 by shafeer

Earlier this morning, we asked readers if Dubai was a shoe, what kind would it be. We got nothing less than colourful ideas.

@Lhjunkie said, “Dispensable, towering heels that probably emit greenhouse gases.”

While one of our commenters on Facebook echoed another one of our colleagues in the office saying that the shoe would be “something without a sole. ”

Kipp would have imagined it would be something more outrageous than Alexander McQueen’s lobster claw shoes. It would be gold plated, of course, laden with cyrstals, making it the most expensive or at least the most bedazzled.

I guess you wouldn’t have imagined it would look like this:

“….An idea of surpassing, between sand & asphalt. A city with a high temperature climate where elite businessmen from the world over come together. ”

The blurb above is just what a press release said, announcing the Middle East debut of the Spirits of Capitals collection from British bootmaker John Lobb. These are bespoke shoes that have been designed by different teams assembled in each of the 11 major cities chosen for the collection.

The cities that inspired the shoes are Paris, London, Taipei, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Moscow, Beijing, Seoul, Geneva and Dubai.

When did a man’s shoe become something more than things to protect your feet and keep them comfortable that it has to reflect the city you live in? And given the final design, we doubt it really had anything to do with the reflection of the city. Otherwise it would look like a hybrid of different shoe styles from the Juttis in India to the Givehs in Iran.

In any case, there are two sets of sandals that represent Dubai, both paying homage of to the Hermes Group-owned John Lobb’s signature double buckle design.

Ready to get your own pair? Run over to Dubai Mall to see the exhibit. But before you do, make sure you’ve got more than 27,000AED for each pair, as this is the starting price. Higher, if you chose the crocodile skin option (*shudder*). Each pair is custom-made so you won’t get your shoes until six to eight months later.

Given that the shoe means more than for foot protection in this region (it’s insulting, for example, to expose the soles of your shoe and of course, there’s that infamous shoe-throwing incident in Iraq), it’ll be interesting to see how the collection will be received…to have Dubai at your feet?

Of course given the price range and the shoe design, it’s crystal clear who the target audience are. It’s not the Bally and Clarks-wearing individual, that’s for sure.