Booted Up

Vintage Boots: Maniatis Red & Black Crotch High Button Boots. France, 1920s.

Vintage Boots: Maniatis Red & Black Crotch High Button Boots. France, 1920s.

"Maniatis, who was born in Greece, provided customized footwear for the likes of Cary Grant and Jean Gabin from his Paris shop in the ninth arrondissement. His location, near the Pigalle red-light district, perhaps helps to explain the design of these boots. They do not appear to be made for the stage, as their soles—original—are only lightly worn. They are also not of any fashionable style of the 1920s. In fact, they are most similar to late-nineteenth-century designs. While the exaggeratedly high and narrowed heel suggests a detail originating in the fetish community, the uppers appear to be cobbled from the conventional design of a Belle Epoque boot but with the addition of another panel to extend it over the thigh." Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 2008.

(Click HERE to view the enlargement.)

I need a list of Top 5 'Boot Songs'.

I want to put together a definitive 'list' of songs that refer to or mention boots.

Well...not just 'boots', but boots in the context of sexy, or 'evil' women - because 'good' girls never, ever wear boots in rock and roll. Femdom-themed missives are welcome too.

Continues after the cut.

Boot Mystery: Can You Help Bootlovers.com Find This Custom Boot Maker?

Image: Life Magazine Archives. 

Hardcore boot fans will recognize the photo - it's one of a series that has been floating around the web for a few years. It was taken in 1967 and features Donyale Luna. The runway show took place at a shopping center in Sydney, Australia.

When (Bootlovers.com editor and human boot encyclopedia) D.J. cannot identify a pair of vintage boots, the boots leap into the 'True Mystery Boots' category. 

These boots were obviously custom made. Donyale Luna was 6'2" and as thin as today's supermodels. We do not expect to find them in a catalogue, or available to the 1967 general public.

We do want to find the name of the boot maker, and any information that could lead to an editorial. If you know who made these boots, and/or can provide information - there's free issues of Bootlovers waiting for you as a reward. Email me!

Boot Fashion: Kit Willow Boots - Qantas Grid Girls.

A follow-up to my Willow Boots posts here and here: a FaceBook friend and Formula 1 fan gave me a heads-up on the latest Kit Willow news! She's designing the outfits for the Qantas Grid Girls! Knee high laced boots and leather shorts! Thank you Matthew!

Courier Mail Article.

And she wear boots:).

IO9.com: Fetish Comes Out Of The Superhero Closet

(IO9.com: Fetish Comes Out Of The Superhero Closet)

Tales of the Rat Fink.

If you get The Sundance Channel as a part of your cable package, there's  a documentary in current rotation called 'Tales of the Rat Fink'. It's the story of Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth and the American 'hot rod' car scene.

The reason I bring this up is because a dear friend is a vintage car nut. I Tivo'd it for him, and while he's sitting here behind me tonight, he pointed out that Mike Frankovich was interviewed and mentioned in the 'Thanks' while the credits rolled.

I know fuck-all about cars - I don't even have a driver's license - but I remember Mike taking me to the infamous Friday night 'car gathering' in Los Angeles at Big Boy's. Jay Leno's hang-out. The cars were awesome. The 'car people' reminded me a lot of fetishists, and sci-fi geeks (I'm obviously both).

Mike is missed. Considering he was a John McCain fan last year, his ghost must be laughing.

Pic: Bootlovers.com #5

STUNNING museum-quality boots.

Maniatis Bottier (French, founded 1920). Boots, 1920s. Left: Black leather, gold leather trim, and black twined cotton laces. Right: Red leather with black leather trim.

These stunning boots are currently on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. More information on the boots available at the link,

(MET Blog: Bootleg Sin)

Additional image can be found here:
(ShoeBlog: Shoes from blog.mode at the MET)

And should an Oceans 11 style break-in at the MET occur in the near future, you all agree to do a collective shrug of your shoulders and agree that Teri would never be the type to do such a thing. Even if she suddenly starts posting from an unnamed South American country.

Dita for PETA

Dita Von Teese Launches PETA's ABC Campaign With Sexy New Ad

Learn More at PETA.org

Something that has been bugging me (because silly things like this do)...people are freaking out over Britney "dear God give this girl lithium, stat" Spears and Lindsay "one woman crime spree' Lohan - meanwhile, Dita's ex is having a rather public drug and alcohol induced meltdown. The record and tour bombed, and his interviews are a shining example of fuckupitry.

While I'm TEAM DITA 100% - dammit, I used to adore Manson. Lohan can go do porn for all I care - I want Brian Warner to get his collective shit together and make me like him again.

Hey! There's another cool blogger in town...

Devoted readers KNOW that I am a serial monogamous type - the love of my life being bootlovers.com. Unlike other blogs, I do not throw my love around willy-nilly like - and I treat blog 'sluts' with utter contempt. The trickle of traffic is not worth the morning-after guilt, in my opinion. A woman needs to keep her self-respect, even in this day and age. It's a 'lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas' sort of thing.

I can be such a prude.

A person needs to earn my love, before I am willing to zip up my boots, slowly ease my gloves on, lace in to my leather, grab their face, and give them a full-on tongue kiss. My highschool boyfriend didn't even get that far - not even on prom night.

But if I had to kick my heels up in the air and have an 'affair'...it's a very small list. I'm still waiting for Keifer Sutherland to call. In the meantime, a kind of weird 'friend of a friend' thing has happened.

Tony Mitchell. If the name sounds familiar to you - and if you've even dipped your pinky in the world of fetish in the past ten years, it should - Tony Mitchell is a very. big. deal. in our little sexual drama. Ever hear of Skin Two Magazine?  Right then - you know Tony.

I don't know about you, but I was buying Skin Two Magazine long before bootlovers.com was a gleam in someone's eye. Hell, the GUYS I DATED bought Skin Two magazine back in the day. I used to consider it as a pass or fail test.  Buy and collect Skin Two? I'll consider dating you. Never heard of it? Good-bye. The people involved with the mag were like demigods to young fetish punk chicks like me. I knew who Tony was decades before he ever heard of me. And I giggle like a schoolgirl when I see his emails in my inbox.

Tony is now writing his own blog, and has plans for a serious webzine in the next month or so.

Normally when somebody tells me they have 'big plans', I'm like 'Yeah, right...' - only because I have heard it SO many times before...but - dammit - this is Tony Mitchell.

If you enjoy intelligent fetish, and artistic kink imagery on the web - he's one of the few you can thank for it. He helped CREATE what we know as the 'fetish scene', and what little punk rock fetish chicks - like me - looked up to.

(http://www.fetishdayz.com)