A QUICK CHAT WITH TRUDDY CHEUNG

Discover the highs and lows of this season’s shoes

What trends are prevalent now?

A lot of glossy patent and metallics and a mixture of more adventurous colours.

Is your job every girl’s dream – shoe shopping, overseas trips?

I guess it does sound pretty good – I do all the buying. , build the range and put the colours together.
It’s the most satisfying thing to see shoes sold and see my colours work. On the contrary, if things don’t sell, you take it personally. However, I think the buying side of my work is the best part.

Is it possible to have heels that are too high?

I don’t think it’s healthy and I don’t put any extremely high heels in my range. Wearing shoes is not a sport where you have to be extremely high. I think a moderate high heel still makes your feet look good. I;ve got very funcky colours but on practical heels. Im so pro the chunky heels this season.

Tell us about the shoes Mileno designed for the Australian Olympic team.

We were asked to design the dress shoes. The styles of the shoe could not bee too outrageous, because the dress uniform had been designed with a classical feel. We were briefed that the shoe had to be on par with the trends as ell. You don’t usually associate comfort with fashion most of the time, but I think we‘ve achieved that.

What did you have to consider in the design that you usually wouldn’t?

The (the Olympic team members) have to wear them for quite long hours and I’ve been told they don’t get a long time to break in the shoe. If a shirt doesn’t fit you can get by, if a shoe doesn’t fit, it will kill your day. To get around this, I kept the heel to a practical height.

Tell us something we don’t know.

Before I started designing Mileno shoes I used to always buy shoes I couldn’t fit into. I’ve got a lot of shoes in my cupboard and they look nice, but I can’t walk in them.