Feast your eyes on these shoes: they are the shape of things to come. Louis Vuitton’s footwear statement for autumn is a clodhopping court, balanced on a 17cm heel. Yes, you read that right – 17cm (7in to you old-school types). There is already a waiting list, and when they hit the shops later this year, they will be the highest heels in fashiondom, pipping the current title-holder, a pair of 16cm black ponyskin shoes by Christian Louboutin, created for the designer Roland Mouret. Add to this the spooky 14cm heelless boots that Antonio Berardi introduced for spring/summer 2008 and the 14cm Terminator sandals by the cult cobbler Alejandro Ingelmo – which have all but sold out in Harvey Nichols (customers are also clamouring for his equally fearsome Thriller sandals) – and a clear picture emerges. Shoes are getting taller and wilder.

“The hardest thing to sell at the moment is a black kitten heel,” says Rebecca Farrar-Hockley, the buying and creative director of Kurt Geiger. According to her, a shoe boom is nigh, spurred on by It-bag fatigue and pared-down ready-to-wear. “Women who want to look edgy are doing it with their shoes,” she says. For retailers, it is a bonanza. Farrar-Hockley expects the £4.6 billion UK shoe market to grow by at least 10% in the next five years. “The profit margin on shoes and bags is comparable, yet people buy three times as many shoes as they do bags,” she continues.

Increasingly, they are investing in hot-off-the-catwalk styles, and the more outrageous, the better. These extreme heels are the last refuge of the fashion snob. The high street simply cannot replicate such daring designs. As one label queen says: “Anybody can carry a bag – look what happened to the Balenciaga Lariat. But not everyone can pull off Balenciaga knee-high gladiator boots.” Indeed, impossible shoes are a badge of pride in fashion circles. “I haven’t bought a pair of shoes I can walk in for about two years,” confesses one fashion buyer. She doesn’t seem to mind, and has adjusted her lifestyle to suit. As well as having a serious taxi addiction, she habitually carries two pairs of shoes: heels for on duty and flats for walking to the bus. It’s no coincidence that Sebastian Manes, accessories honcho at Selfridges, reports selling as many flat pumps as he does outrageous heels.

Wear a sensible heel and the fash pack will, literally, look down on you. I narrowly avoided shoe shade when I picked up a pair of YSL Tribute sandals at the more commercial heel height of 11cm, as opposed to the 16cm catwalk version. “Claudia, you’re not going to wear them, are you? Those are selling heels,” said my designer-clad friend, not bothering to hide her disgust. For all you fashion civilians, a “selling” heel is a toned-down (lower) version of what appears on the catwalk.

“It’s gone over the top, and it’s about time people came back to reality,” says Manolo Blahnik, who won’t go higher than 11.5cm. He’s right, of course. Reality will return, and kitten heels, too. But for now, the shoe-buying experience is a numbers game, with the key figures being how high and how much.

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