SHOES: they're a great and wonderful thing, the source of much
pleasure and pain (on both feet and bank balance), and now the
subject of Harrods' latest
revamp project, as the store opens the doors to its brand new Shoe
Heaven department today Just what is it about shoes that make them so heavenly a
thing to possess?
Like most women, my fascination began as a child - slipping my
too-small feet into my mother's heels, lured by that click-clack
sound and a certain sense of glamorous impracticality. But it's one
that won me over from the start and next I was playing out in a
little pair of sparkly spotted heeled pumps that, really, I should
have been saving for best for a forthcoming wedding. Such was my
penchant for pretty shoes and the great outdoors that we had to
re-buy them. Trainers just weren't my thing - yet.
Teenage years demanded, in my eyes, boring and practical school
shoes - yet I always managed to sneak in a platform or something
that said "fashion" as opposed to "maths". And outside of school,
my collection of shoes was already beginning to amass to more
significant proportions than those of my friends. It still does.
When one recently visited and proceeded to begin counting the
footwear that lined one of several racks and dotted (neatly) the
hallway, I had to quickly point out that they should stop right
there and then. Until they got inside my flat, they hadn't seen
anything yet. I own a lot of shoes. Perhaps it's not the biggest
revelation: I do work in fashion (although that still doesn't make
it OK for friends and family to continue to buy me shoe cards. I am
29, not nine anymore).
Yet for all those towering boxes, those points, wedges,
platforms, chunky heels, pin-thin stilettos, straps, buckles and
blooms, I find myself time and again living a life of shoe rotation
and wearing the same few pairs: for comfort and because they're
cool, Converse (I've had the same pair since I was 16); for fancy
occasions, my toe-cleavage-revealing Christian Louboutins; for
stomping about in winter or festival fields, some camo boots; and
for everything else, my classic Chanel pumps.
But note to self, I really should remind myself of what lies
beneath all those other lids and layers of tempting tissue paper:
my 18th birthday present, a beautiful pair of pink satin Jimmy Choo
sandals, an art deco motif at their toe and lengths of leather to
wind up the ankle, leaves spawning at their end; gold-studded Yves
Saint Laurent Rive Gauche Perspex platforms, glitter in their
heels; vertigo-inducing Manolos in white, blue, black and yellow;
Marc Jacobs dancing shoes, Mary-Janes, mouse pumps and more.
Harrods' new shoe department, therefore, is the stuff of dreams.
But before I next add to my collection, it might perhaps be an idea
for me to get to grips with my own shoe department, as it were.
Now, where did I put those Christopher Kane sandals again?
