Last night my sister hosted an Australia Day BBQ which, like any good party that involves teenagers, had it’s fair share of dramas. Aside from a few uninvited guests, two party-goers having it off in the downstairs bathroom, and a screaming match between my two younger siblings, there was also the problem of guests not bringing enough food or alcohol to go around. It got me thinking - with MySpace gate-crashers making the news, parental monitoring becoming increasingly lax, and the end of children being taught correct social behaviour at an early age, has the party etiquette of old been thrown out the door along with the please’s, thank-you’s and excuse-me’s?

Call me old-fashioned, but when you host a party, your guests should be expected to bring a dish (salad, starters, or dessert) and provide a significant portion of the alcohol they intend to drink. If you’re opening your home to a group of partying friends and have spent the day tidying up, setting up, and ensuring you have food for the main meal, the last thing you want is for everyone to arrive empty-handed and expecting to be waited on hand and foot. Unfortunately it appears that my old-fashioned belief is exactly that - old-fashioned. Going on last night’s showing, hosts are now expected to purchase and prepare 95% of the total food and alcohol that will be consumed (apparently if a guest turns up with a bag of M&Ms, this is a welcome and generous surprise). Although the food portion of this new rule seems to be firmly in place, the section on provisions of alcohol is currently in it’s infancy and is presently one of those unacknowledged guidelines. The host will say that the guests should B.Y.O. alcohol, but the host will also not be surprised when the guests turn up without any alcohol (pleading poverty). Of course the host will then be pushed into sharing out the alcohol they’ve bought for themselves, proving just what a ‘good friend’ they are.

Once the food and alcohol situation has been sorted out, you then move on to the new etiquette governing social behaviour. When your host prepares the food for you and sets it all out on the table, it is no longer a sign for everyone to sit down and eat - in fact, if you want, you can ignore the food (and the host) and instead have a discussion about calorie-counting with your four other friends who are also ignoring the food (and the host). After dinner, if one or two people offer to help clear up, that is a signal that the ‘offering-of-help’ quota has been reached and everyone else can sit back and relax. This period after dinner is also the opportune time to run off and make out behind the bushes - or as I learned last night, in the downstairs bathroom set aside for the use of guests. When your host asks you to re-join the rest of the partygoers, you don’t have to pay them any attention (even though you’re in their house). Basically, modern party etiquette states that you can now treat the host’s house and their hospitality in whichever way you choose.

The final rule within the modern party etiquette book of lore involves the after-party clean up process. No matter how many offers of help the host gets to tidy up, the host must act like a martyr and try to do the entire clean-up process themselves. If anyone cleans up without asking the host permission to lend a hand, this gives the host the right to get very dramatic and upset - after all, you would be taking away their opportunity to dine out on the statement: ‘I tidied up after you all came to my party single-handedly‘ - for months.

In fact, everything you were taught as a youngster about proper party behaviour has basically been turned on it’s head - what was polite is now considered an offense, what was unspeakably rude is now happily tolerated. I don’t know about you, but I think I’ll stick to my own territory of small dinner gatherings that end with minimal mess, minimal drama, and without anyone feeling the need to have sex in the downstairs bathroom.

For all you Aussies out there, I hope you’re all having a fantastic time at a backyard BBQ or at a game of beach cricket.

For all you non-Aussies out there, I’m truly sorry you’re not lucky enough to call Australia home!

Rob asked me the other day how many pairs of black shoes I owned. I couldn’t answer, not because I couldn’t remember (two or three pairs would be hard to forget), but because I didn’t want him to place a ban on any further black shoe purchases. If I’m completely honest, I have three pairs of black boots, four pairs of black flats, and four pairs of black heels. Some people, including Rob, would probably say that eleven pairs of black shoes was enough. I know that many of my girlfriends would say that those eleven pairs are for very specific occasions which other pairs wouldn’t be suitable for. I would have to agree.

To be honest, I can’t remember whether my love affair with shoes began because I played up to the ‘girls-love-shoes’ stereotype when I was younger, or whether I really did just find them a necessary luxury. Now I’m more likely to spend an entire week’s pay on shoes than I am on clothes, and I’m one of those people who plans what I’m going to wear around which pair of shoes I want to take out for a spin. Although it sounds frivolous, I really don’t think non-shoe-lovers appreciate just how much thought goes into designing the perfect pair.

It turns out that high heels were invented for the purpose of helping horse-riders keep their feet in the stirrups. Catherine de’Medici of France was the first to have high heels designed specifically for wearing on an everyday basis, as she wanted to increase her height and improve her stature. Others caught on, and quite quickly high heels as we know them today came into existence. The term ‘well heeled’ originally referred to the French courtly elite who could afford to wear designer high heels. Although the French Revolution saw the abolition of heels as they were associated with wealth and the aristocracy, they eventually came back into fashion in the nineteenth century and have firmly stayed in the limelight since then.

Nowadays, shoe making seems to be caught between trying to make as big a splash as possible whilst trying to maintain an element of class. Take Marc Jacobs’ Spring 2008 collection for example (see black shoe below). I am yet to see anyone wearing this abomination of a shoe in public, possibly because they’re impossible to walk in without needing a complete knee reconstruction afterwards. I’m sure Jacobs would argue that the shoe itself is sleek and classical in design, and the oddly positioned heel was due to his fascination with Picasso (what absolute trite!). Likewise, the Tony Bianco elasticized flat (also below) makes a mockery of shoe lovers everywhere. Although I’m sure the intention was that they would be flexible and bend once you had them on, I have held these in my hands in person and can tell you they would break your toes before they bent to your foot.

The problem is that designers know they can create unbearable crap because fashion victims will put themselves through all sorts of torture to wear them. I don’t think this willingness to put up with intense pain is the sort of honest, loving relationship that a proper shoe design should give you. In fact, you could say that this sort of pairing (bad shoe design with tasteless fashion wannabes) is similar to the Britney Spears-Adnan the Paparazzo relationship whereby a popular brand goes bad, and then the hangers-on try to milk the brand (however distasteful it has become) for all it’s worth. In truth, these shoes are giving shoe lovers everywhere a bad name.

If I have taught the world nothing else before I die, I would like to be remembered for pointing out that an oddly-placed heel or a woefully elasticized flat does not equal a fashion miracle. If you run into me in heaven, I’ll be the one wearing a nice pair of camel coloured peep-toe kitten heels.

(L) Marc Jacobs Spring 2008 Collection; (R) Tony Bianco Spring/Summer 2007-08 Collection