Um lado da moeda

Acho muito interessante observar como a opinião da gente pode mudar com o passar do tempo, com o conhecimento adquirido, com a experiência. Encontrei dois textos falando sobre Melissa, escritos pela mesma pessoa, porém com opiniões quase opostas. Aí vai o primeiro, escrito em fevereiro de 2008. Os tais "impossibly ugly shoe models" citados lá no final são a Ultra VW e a MJ. Uma curiosidade: esse texto fala que a Melissa começou como uma empresa de vender embalagens plásticas para engradados de vinho...

Vivienne Westwood for Melissa Shoes

“Life in plastic, is fantastic” spoke a song years ago. I guess they must have been familiar with the Brazilian ways.

Melissa is a well known brand in the shoes industry (at least in Brazil) and if you take a look at [their] 1979 sandal, you’ll know exactly what Melissa is all about! Besides being made from plastic, Melissa Shoes also seem to have a golden hitch somewhere for they sell about 2.3 million pairs a year.

Starting by selling plastic packaging for wine crates, Mellisa is selling designer footware now. The world’s most talented and known fashion designers (and architects) gave a touch of art to the jelly shoe. So it seems it was not the Swedish Giant H&M who invented haute couture designers for high end fashion, but the Brazilian Melissa who convinced Jean-Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler do show off the plastic shoes.

Since then, Melissa has partnered with leading designers not only from fashion world but also architects and furniture designers. Latest on the list is Vivienne Westwood who signed two models for Melissa.

"There is nothing more ‘ordinary’ than a Coca-Cola bottle or a can of Campbell’s soup, but properly portrayed in Andy Warhol’s work and it became refined pop art. We use similar reasoning behind Melissa’s strategy. Why should modern design and taste only be characterized by expensive products for the wealthy classes?" Said Edson Matsuo, the brand’s creative director.

Hm. Can’t really decide if it’s because I’m not Brazilian that I don’t feel impressed with these shoes, or it’s because there’s really nothing impressive about them at all! As for their creative director who compares Warhol’s work with plastic shoes, well, that leaves me a bit confused. What does a PVC shoe has to do with art if it’s not by the very perversity of the world we live in that we make a relation between the two?

Say I held my voice for vegan shoes because I respect animals and therefore I’m not very comfortable at the idea of killing them for our eyes pleasure, but when plastic's involved, that’s a bit of another story. For the short story and to keep you informed – “PVC” or “vinyl” and chemically known as (C2H3Cl)n has been reported for being human carcinogen. Additives mixed with PVC resins such as stabilizers, plasticizers and fillers can leach out of a PVC product during its useful life posing public health hazards, including the development of reproductive problems in children.

I’m not a paranoid person, nor do I want to imply that over at Melissa they don’t respect the environment (or the human being for the matter), but PVC shoes make me kinda freak out and ask myself what goes so wrong with people who absolutely want to make every step of every day in plastic shoes.

Besides being two impossibly ugly shoe models (the Vivienne Westwood signed shoes), what do you think about plastic shoes? Could you? Would you? Do you wear plastic shoes?

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