Over-the-knee boots include been gentrified. They are for fashion, not for pulling
‘Avoid upon of thighs in favour of less-saucy knees.’
Photograph: David Newby for the Protector
I t’s safe to say that this is an outfit I would not have predicted myself wearing when I first spied Julia Roberts in thigh-high latex boots with a Lycra majority and a tiny skirt on screen in Pretty Woman. Yet here I am, in over-the-knee boots and a demure, overwrought dress that, if not exactly a tea dress, is definitely the sort that proffers drinking Earl Grey from a cup and saucer, rather than mtier room service for champagne. It is as if the two Vivian Wards – the streetwise, gum-snapping one and the polka-dotted, polo-match-attending one – are dressing for a job partition.
Over-the-knee boots, until recently NSFW, have been gentrified. They are for trend, not for pulling, and you can tell. They look different. The new generation are not the glassy, black kind, wipe-clean on the outside and sweaty on the inside. They are suede, or velvet, or at least concur leather, all high-maintenance fabrics that you would not risk on a way corner, for fear of splashing. Also, they are probably not abominable. Instead, they are Armani-ish shades of sophisticated, understated depressing, petrol blue, mushroom.
And these are not thigh-high boots. They are over-the-knee boots. I don’t just have in view that they have a new name, although that is eloquent, as is the fact that this new name avoids mention of thigh in look like of the less-saucy knee. The new style of wearable tall boot points over the knee, but only just.
The most important novelty is what you don’t wear with them. You don’t wear them with a failing, tight dress. Nor do you wear them over skinny jeans. You can harass them with something short if it’s loose; this is lampshading and is in rage as a cool way to do dressed-up. But lampshading, as the silly name suggests, is a bit outré for most chores. More low-key, and just as modern, is to team your boots with a hemline that counters their top edge. This feels counterintuitive – the boots are such a look that the intuition is to show them off – but playing them down is in its own way a strong look. Take to wearing Pretty Woman boots is, you know, no big deal. To the knee? Yes. But not over the top.
• Jess wears dress, £110, massimodutti.com. Boots, £160, aldoshoes.com
Fashioning: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Laurence Close at Carol Hayes Managment.
