April 18, 2014 |
DIOR HOMME: THE TRAINER
I admit that my recollection of A-level history is vague. It’s only the truly trivial facts that have stayed lodged somewhere. Such as Cardinal Wolsey being the son of a butcher. Or Suleiman the Magnificent, the longest-reigning ruler of the Ottoman Empire, wearing rouge on his cheeks to disguise his sickly pallor and strike fear into the hearts of his enemies. He also wore purple, the colour of the Prophet Muhammad. At least I’m pretty sure it was purple. It may have been green, but for the purposes of this let’s stick with purple. I think I may have used the line about the Prophet in an essay, too. Anyway, for some reason (maybe it was the purple), but I couldn’t help but think of Suleiman when looking through the Dior Homme s/s collection. He’d done so well for a supreme leader, successfully invading and occupying half of Eastern Europe, capturing Rhodes and Hungary, before he failed at the siege of Vienna. To be honest, he tried to capture Vienna twice. It wasn’t that he was incapable of taking it over. I mean, Vienna isn’t that big after all. It was just that he overstretched his resources, it was too far from home and it was winter. The Austrians probably hadn’t needed to do much to defeat the Ottomans. They were exhausted. Which in hindsight is maybe a good thing, because if they had captured Vienna, how hard would it have been to capture the rest of Europe? Not that he gave up on expanding his empire (well, he was a huge fan of Alexander the Great), he just refocused his attentions. Anyway, for some reason, I thought of shoes – what was the Ottoman army wearing on its feet? Considering the fact that there was snow and roads probably weren’t really all that common (though I assume that what roads there were weren’t too widely used anyway, seeing as the usual tactic in a combat situation is using the element of surprise. Though to be fair, people mostly charged at each other back then), what if they’d had proper shoes? A pair of trainers, for example. Maybe a pair by Dior Homme. They really are rather magnificent. Purple and navy, the latter named for the colour of the uniforms worn by the British Navy, which admittedly came post Suleiman, but he had, when he was alive and ruling, inherited his father’s large navy, of which he took full advantage. It helped him capture Rhodes. These are a regal pair of shoes – steeped, if your imagination is bent that way, in a rich history, and designed for maximum walking and charging comfort. The soles practically bounce over rough terrain. The upper keeping your feet warm and dry in the snow. Imagine if the Ottoman Turks had been wearing these when they made their two attempts to capture Vienna? The city would have fallen and we wouldn’t have to travel to Turkey for exotic rugs.
By Natalie Dembinska
