Then I met an Englishman.
“Oh,” he said.
“Won’t you walk up and down my spine,
It makes me feel strangely alive.”
I said ‘In these shoes?’
I doubt you’d survive.”

In these Shoes ~ Kirsty MacColl

ELV (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Olalalamode”, a project by Street Artist ELV, consists of a closet full of hand painted wheat pastes glorifying the most psychologically laden ladies accessory, the shoe.  These eclectic shoes started to appear on Bushwick streets late summer, so we know they must be for Spring 2012. Garish, oddly elongated, and elevated beyond sense, this catch-me collection might not attract the eye of Imelda Marcos but Lady Gaga could certainly give them a lick. In a bold simple cartoon sketch style, the vividly rendered pumps in bright colors are marching and preening in better alleyways and empty lots everywhere.

ELV (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Fancy shoes are not usual for the Street Art scene but many a man has been transfixed by a woman in some hot high heels, hoping to have them scattered across his living room floor, or elsewhere in his apartment. Mickey Rooney didn’t have that kind of fortune. “I buy women shoes and they use them to walk away from me.”

Certain women love them more – if for different reasons. That whinneying clothes horse Carrie Bradshaw once supposedly blew 40K on shoes, but no one ever believed the characters on that show actually existed. Madame Marcos, who did exist, lustily defended herself against Philipinos clamoring for her well-coiffed head by exclaiming, “I did not have three thousand pairs of shoes, I had one thousand and sixty”. And don’t forget Condi Rice, the Secretary of State and accomplished pianist who strutted up 5^th Avenue shoe shopping and later catching a Broadway show while Hurricane Katrina ravaged the south. Clearly, the list of people who are driven crazy by shoes is endless. ELV is here for you.

ELV (photo © Jaime Rojo)

ELV (photo © Jaime Rojo)

ELV (photo © Jaime Rojo)

ELV (photo © Jaime Rojo)

ELV (photo © Jaime Rojo)

ELV (photo © Jaime Rojo)

ELV (photo © Jaime Rojo)

ELV (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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