The height, and price, may knock you off your feet

　　

　　Romanian shoe designer Mihai Albu's latest sandals have 12-inch heels. Because many women 'don't have long legs.'

　　

　　Romanian shoe designer Mihai Albu's new sandals are being compared to skyscrapers because of their towering 12-inch heels. But the price might also have something to do with it. They're selling for as much as $1,525. (Vadim Ghirda, Associated Press)

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　　Reporting from Bucharest, Romania

　　A designer known as Romania's "shoe architect" has come out with a pair of sandals that increases a woman's height by 12 inches.

　　The shoes are being compared to skyscrapers because of their towering heels. But the price might also have something to do with it. In a nation where the average salary is $575 a month, the handcrafted sandals are selling for as much as $1,525.

　　"Heels have an advantage because [many women] don't have long legs," said Mihai Albu, who has had a 20-year love affair making stilettos. "They reposition the waist," he said in an interview Wednesday in his Bucharest atelier.

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　　High heels have become fashionable, but Albu's are at least twice the height of those that international designers have been offering for the last several years.

　　For instance, in Washington last month, independent boutiques were strutting footwear that seemed revolutionary, such as apple-red patent and black stiletto heels. But the platforms were only 1 1/2 inches and the red heels 4 1/2 inches.

　　"This is unusual, but I think we can expect many other fashion houses to be doing this," said Marcellous Jones, editor of FashionInsider.com magazine. He said the late British designer Alexander McQueen, who died in February, used shoes with 12-inch heels in his last collection.

　　"They are impractical, but there are women who are brave enough to wear them. They get attention for the wearer and the designer," Jones said.

　　Albu, a former architect, blends math, architecture and art in his creations, which are more foot sculpture than shoes.

　　He uses French leather and encrusts it with jewels, feathers and mirrors, and taps into Romanian women's perennial love affair with high heels.

　　Despite the price, Albu says he has received dozens of orders for the sandals from Romania's well-heeled.

　　"I am creating a constructed chaos," he said, describing the footwear in architectural terms.

　　In addition to their breathtaking height, Albu's shoes feature special effects, and an appearance that varies with the angle. There's a sandal with an emerald heel topped by a skull mask out of which bursts a shock of peacock feathers. Another style features three heels, two of them purely decorative. There are boots that resemble a glass vase and unicorn-like boots with a heel in front.

　　And then there's the 12.2-inch-heel sandal, a construction of three black wedges.

　　"If a woman is 5 foot 9, she'd be towering above everyone if she wore these," Albu said.

　　Albu draws inspiration from Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi and Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi, and he avoids the mall.

　　"I keep an eye on major shoe designers, so I know what not to make," he said.