Prada – followthethings.com

“My Fancy High Heels“
A documentary film directed by Ho, Chao-ti for Conjunction Films, broadcast on Public Television Service, Taiwan.
Embedded in full above. Mandarin & English, with Mandarin subtitles.

Everyone has challenges, dreams and sources of sorrow and happiness in their lives. Wealthy young women in New York city. Impoverished slaughterhouse, tannery and factory workers in China. Maybe even baby calves. And their lives can be connected by following things. Like a pair of sculpture-like Bally, Prada, Gucci, Fendi high heel shoes that sell for $300 to $1,000 a pair. Each person connected by these shoes is worth knowing, spending time with, walking in their shoes for a while. The calves – and the people who kill, bleed and skin them – too, because their hide makes the softest leather. There’s empathy here for everyone, but connecting these lives, sorrows, happiness through these shoes is jarring for its audiences. The extremes of wealth and poverty, glamour and horror, are so extreme. Exploited workers don’t only make clothes for high street brands and retailers. The most exclusive brands, with the biggest profit margins, are just as tainted. This is a Chinese language film, and it’s difficult to find or buy a DVD with English subtitles. So a lot of the discussion below has been Google translated. The audience, for a change, is not English-speaking and not in the Global North.

Page reference: Jenny Hart & Ian Cook (2024) My Fancy High Heels (taster). followthethings.com/my-fancy-high-heels.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes.