Let's look at their origins, and later explore why they have come to be so iconic in our tiny, insular fashion community around the world.
Origins of the RHS
Vivienne Westwood did not invent the wooden platform shoe. She rather reinvented it. It is believed that her inspiration for the original RHS ballerina shoe was Japanese okobo. Okobo are tall, wooden platform sandals with a sloped front platform and a cloth thong. They're traditionally worn with kimono to keep the hem of the garment from touching the ground. The wood can be unwaxed and natural, lacquered a glossy black, or even decorated with painted designs in some cases. Okobo meant to be worn by young women and children tend to be much shorter, but the ones that Maiko wear can tower as tall as 15cm.
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| Left: okobo Right: VW Ballerina RHS (kid leather and wood sole) |
One reason that it is believed by Vivienne Westwood fans that the inspiration for RHS was okobo is because only 1 year earlier Vivienne Westwood released a different shoe clearly inspired by another Japanese sandal. The 1984 Rope Thong Sandal from the "Hypnos" S/S collection clearly resembled a geta, a sandal featuring anywhere from 1-3 "teeth" of wood instead of a solid platform.
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| Left: geta Right: VW's Rope Thong Sandal (wood sole) |
It appears that both shoes were designed with modern adjustments for wearability and her own fashion sense while still trying to preserve the details that made them beautiful and unique in the first place: the heel cutout and rounded toe for the RHS and the additional teeth for the RTS probably make the VW reimaginings more comfortable and wearable than their traditional counterparts, or at least make her versions unique.
Returning to the RHS- they were unveiled in the 1985 "Mini-Crini" S/S collection, paired with a mini hoop-skirt and bustier. I have no doubt that these images had a hand in cementing these shoes into our fashion. Incidentally, wearing this kind of shoe is the closest to going en pointe that most of us will ever safely get.
Returning to the RHS- they were unveiled in the 1985 "Mini-Crini" S/S collection, paired with a mini hoop-skirt and bustier. I have no doubt that these images had a hand in cementing these shoes into our fashion. Incidentally, wearing this kind of shoe is the closest to going en pointe that most of us will ever safely get.
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Note: There are some sources online that claim that supermodel Naomi Campbell fell down while wearing RHS in a runway show, but they are incorrect: she fell trying to wear Vivienne Westwood's Super Elevated Ghillie Heels, which have a 30.5cm heel. RHS are famously easy to walk in, with a very smooth sweep from heel-to-toe, and an easy platform height of 7.5 cm. The typical dangers in RHS are uneven sidewalks/cobbles, going offroad, and curbs, not unlike any other platform shoe.
Westwood's Official Arrival in Japan
The first Vivienne Westwood boutique in Japan opened in 1996 and was located in Tokyo. Information regarding this boutique is scant, but it appears that it did carry the entire VW Line, granting hithertobefore unprecedented access to Westwood's apparel for Tokyo residents.
The following except is from an article dated August 20, 1996:
LONDON — Vivienne Westwood has opened a 3,330-square-foot store in Tokyo.
It is her first outside the U.K.
The shop was opened by Westwood’s Japanese licensee, Itochu. The two companies have worked together for three years, and Itochu recently helped Westwood buy the property housing her London flagship on Conduit Street.
The Tokyo shop carries the entire Westwood line, including her Gold Label, her less-expensive Red Label by Vivienne Westwood, MAN, and all of her accessories.
There is also a department for made-to-order apparel.
Before opening her own shops in Japan her products were still accessible to fashionable Japanese citizens in other boutiques.
Viviko Style
As it turns out what we might identify as Lolita fashion in the 90s in Japan intersects quite a bit with another style commonly called ヴィヴィ子, or Viviko. This style name was also a sort of moniker for a girl who dressed head-to-toe in Vivienne Westwood articles. Viviko was at its peak in Japan during the 90's. Viviko style wasn't fixed in one specific way, but more common elements were blazers with the iconic heart-shaped lapels, knee-length flared, pleated, or ruffled skirts, RHS of any variety or any other iconic VW shoe style, and a leather handbag. This seems to be the ideal "formula" for a Viviko coordinate according to anyone recounting the 90s style with nostalgia. Real worn Viviko could include fur coats, floor-length skirts or trousers, shorts, t-shirts, etc, but the nostalgic memory of the style still holds to that blazer, the skirt, the curly twin-tail hair, and the RHS. |
| Vivienne Westwood wearing her iconic blazer and some RHS. |
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| Illustration featuring VW Garments Ran-Oishi's instagram |
RHS in Lolita Fashion
I think the RHS's popularity in Lolita Fashion can be somewhat owed to some popular fiction IPs in the early 2000s, and some of it is due to the underground music scene and associated street fashions in the 90's. This next part is more of an opinion piece than actual fact and by no means should be used as a primary source, or even a secondary source. It's just my ramblings and observations as a third-party who has never been to Japan and only became directly involved in Lolita Fashion in 2013.
Music and Street Fashion Scene
Vivienne Westwood's influence and connection to the punk fashion and music scene in the west undoubtedly helped to cement her fashion brand into Japanese youth street fashion. She famously ran a boutique named "SEX" from 1974 to 1976 in London where famous punk icons like the Sex Pistols shopped and even worked. Her subversive nature and marriage of underground fashion and music in London in the 70s and 80s extended to Japan in the 90s. While it is easy to forget that Lolita fashion is and was a street fashion (what with the decay and perversion of Harajuku in modern times) our beloved frills were born from punk rock and rebellion. Rebellious teenagers were wearing VW pieces to underground concerts and in magazine fashion snaps around the time that Lolita fashion started to gain its notoriety and its name.
Nana
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| Tsuzuki Mai wearing Viviko style |
Kamikaze Girls
Novala Takemoto's 2002 novel Shimotsuma Monogatari did not introduce RHS into Lolita fashion, but I think it had a hand in helping to elevate them to the level of a status symbol that has endured to this day even in the western communities. These days nobody seems to mention Nana with regards to Lolita fashion, but even newbies will reference Kamikaze Girls and Momoko. Momoko referred to her RHS as essential for the fashion and even outright refused to engage in any daily activity that wouldn't suit the shoes out of devotion to them.
I've prepared some relevant quotes I copied from the english translation of Shimotsuma Monogatari, known as Kamakaze Girls.
So aside from my shoes, which are Vivienne Westwood's Rocking Horse Ballerinas and Lolita must-haves (they go with any Lolita outfit), I am clad head-to-toe in my darling Baby, the Stars Shine Bright. -page 13When I needed close to a hundred thousand yen for a pair of Vivienne Westwood's Rocking Horse Ballerinas, which I'd decided were absolutely essential for full Lolitahood, I fed the loser this story: - page 43
Additionally on page 34 the protagonist Momoko explains that riding bicycles in RHS and Lolita Fashion is not dignified and can even damage a Lolita dress. There's a humorous sequence where she describes that she'd rather be grossly injured by riding a pennyfarthing than be seen riding a modern bicycle as well.
It is worth mentioning that in the film adaptation of the book Momoko does not wear Vivienne Westwood RHS at all, nor does she mention them or their essential presence in her Lolitahood. She has some chunky platform RHS-adjacent shoes that have a much taller wooden platform, a rounded and bulbous curved toe-box, a seam vertically on the toe-box, and black foxing that joins the shoe upper to the wooden platform. They're cute, but not VW. No doubt they were designed to look just barely distinct enough from the originals they were meant to emulate.
As an aside, I'd like to point out that the translation is not perfectly reliable as it appears that the translator did not have a personal working knowledge of the fashion and famous articles of clothing within the fashion. This likelihood is easily noticed when you look at the desrcription of Momoko's outfit on page 12-13.
I'm wearing a red Elizabethan-style dress that has a frilly four-tiered skirt, princess sleeves tht open really wide at the end (with lots of lace trim), and a rose-shaped lace doily sewn into the middle of the bodice, the white frills of the dress gorgeously setting off the red material while giving a very special and cute impression, and even though the outfit is adorable enough without it, a detachable lace cape for good measure.
A seasoned Lolita fashion enthusiast with a knowledge of the brand Baby the Stars Shine Bright would know from that description that the dress being described is the Elizabeth OP, but the translator may have thought it was an Elizabethan style dress and did not have further knowldge of what they were describing. The Elizabeth OP is not an example of Elizabethan style, and is so far from that historical period of dress that the description would probably make a historical fashion buff more than a little peeved. It is also possible that the author Novala Takemoto was not aware that the lace "cape" on the shoulders of the dress is not detatchable, in which case his other descriptions and even the name of the dress in the original text could be slightly dubious. I don't have an original Japanese version to compare to unfortunately. /end rant
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Final Thoughts
Disclaimer - This piece was written by someone who is not from Japan, who was not even alive when the shoe was invented, who is using the internet and any recorded/saved/surviving information to come to conclusions about something that was created by someone who has since passed away. It is very possible I've missed something, or something was not saved into the internet, or not translated, or not known to anyone other than Vivienne Westwood and her near and dear friends and family, etc. I started writing this article around 2 years ago, before she passed away, and then I shied away from publishing anything with her name on it for a while without putting significantly more effort into it. It doesn't represent 2 years of continuous research, but it does represent me agonizing over it for that time period.
I wanted to dig into the history of the RHS and how it relates directly to our specific niche fashion, and how it was injected into the Japanese alternative fashion scene. I think that the iconic shoe, and Vivienne's iconic Orb logo, are subtle mainstays in our fashion and amongst many similar Japanese street fashions. People who don these symbols harken to the earlier days of our fashion, to our roots in punk fashion, and to our fashion's ability to co-opt popular items into our fluid sense of self. Lolita fashion is famous amongst its wearers and detractors for its rigid rules, but those oddly rigid rules are flexible enough to allow our fashion to continue to revere a piece of footwear never designed for us but nonetheless representative of our image of our "old-school" within our gated community.
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