Anne Hathaway Has Shoes To Sing About In Les Misérables

As a fan both of musicals (look, blame my mum, she insisted on blasting Rogers And Hammerstein at full volume during my formative years) and the slinky Anne Hathaway, I admit to bring cautiously optimistic about the new big screen version of Les Misérables.

I didn't know that Ms. Hathaway was a vegan, but she was insistent that it wasn't just the craft services table that came up to scratch on set.

Costume designer on Les Misérables Paco Delgado has revealed that his department had to source and construct custom vegan shoes for the actress. He told WWD's Footwear News:

“She’s vegan, so we couldn’t use any animal materials on the shoes for her character Fantine. We had to find very specific shoemakers to create lace-up boots and ankle boots."

He also came up with especially-distressed ballet flats for Hathaway, which are the only examples of this particular example of attention to detail to make it onto the big screen: don't blink, and you might just be able to catch them in the theatrical trailer.

You might wonder whether all of this matters for items of clothing that will, at best, only be glimpsed in the film. If you notice the clothes, then you're not paying attention to the story and characters. To put it another way; you don't want to leave a musical humming the sets.

I, for one, admire Anne for sticking to her principles. She has to shave her head and sing live in the film: let the girl have her custom kicks, for gods sake. Shoes maketh the man, it's said. Let's see how important they are to her performance in what promises to be a big noise for cinema in 2013.

Les Misérables is released in the UK on January 13th. Let's have a look for those shoes...