The shoe boom: Charlotte Dellal

Charlotte Dellal loves leopard- print. She loves it so much that she always wears something emblazoned with it. Today it is her handbag, but she has to stop herself using too much of it in her shoes. “This year, I did something stripy and called it Hyena. I just couldn’t help myself.”
Whether leopard-print, satin, suede or sparkly, Dellal’s shoes are not for the faint-hearted. For starters, they are, as she points out, “all super-super-high heels”. Born of her own exotic life and aesthetic, they are shoes to go dancing in, shoes to shine in and shoes to wear for a decent bit of showing off. Her idea of the perfect specimen is “one that gets you noticed. If you get loads of compliments, you know you’re getting something right”.
It’s what you would expect from a girl who has moved with the jet set all her life. The daughter of the property developer Guy Dellal and his socialite wife, Andrea, a model and muse herself in the 1980s, Charlotte, 26, is one of three achingly cool siblings.

Her sister, Alice, is a model and It girl about town, and her brother, the Hoxton gallery owner Alex, is to be seen squiring his girlfriend, Charlotte Casiraghi, the granddaughter of Grace Kelly. So, no shortage on the glam front, then.
Having studied at the London College of Fashion and Cordwainers, Dellal moved straight into setting up her own label, trying, unsuccessfully, to establish production in her native Brazil, before eventually settling on Italy. For her, the secret of a good shoe is in the detail. There’s a pleat here, a piece of vintage fabric there, a ruffle on a heel or a mega platform, which makes each design unique.

It’s an approach that is clearly working, as her shoes have been picked up by Browns, Harvey Nichols, Dover Street Market and Net-a-porter — not a bad stockists list considering this is only her second season. “I find them kind of special shoes,” she muses. “They’re not your average going-out shoes. They’re shoes you can put on display.”
Which is not to say they shouldn’t be worn. Normally, Dellal wouldn’t be seen dead in anything but a pair:
“I always, always wear high heels.”

But, unfortunately for her, at five months’ pregnant, that is proving difficult. “At the moment, I’m not really allowed to wear them,” she says. “My mum tells me off. But I guess it’s good for my feet to have some time off. Well, nine months off, actually.”
Luckily, for us, the same does not apply.