It’s a funny old world: Gabrielle Mullarkey
Time to ’fess up. I have never owned more than three pairs of shoes at any time. I can only gawp at those telly ads where women display walk-in wardrobes, complete with row upon row of shoes. (Wouldn’t that whiff a bit, though? Just asking.)
I never planned it thus. I just don’t have room for excess footwear and my lifestyle means I only require the following: trainers for all-purpose walking, boots for dodging winter puddles, and dressy heels for popping to the beach with Victoria Beckham – who was recently pictured by the sea in red stilettos. I also do a bit of seasonal rotation, replacing trainers with deck shoes in the summer. I learnt my lesson a few summers ago, attending a wedding in my heels. Imagine the delight of every female guest when we had to cross a cattle grid to reach the reception…
I was about to move in with a boyfriend once when he totted up our respective footwear and opined, ‘No real woman would have so few shoes.’ I felt like responding, ‘Well, maybe a “real” man wouldn’t own shoe trees’ but, not wanting to start a battle of the sexes, I merely replied, ‘These particular boots were made for walking’ and did a runner.
My footwear frugality got a boost years ago when
I watched Sarah Jessica
Parker totter about as
Carrie Bradshaw in Sex
and the City, at one point chasing barefoot after a mugger yelling, ‘Keep my purse, but give me back my Manolos!’ Carrie ends up hobbling, cap in hand, to Mr Big, asking him to bail her out after overspending on heels by $40,000. Of course, to Carrie and many others, a finely formed shoe is an essential expense. A friend of mine
asked for a 40th birthday cake in the shape and colour of her favourite Louboutins. To which my response was, ‘You’ve more than one pair?’
Mine is the cobbler’s equivalent of a capsule wardrobe. Coco Chanel famously said, ‘A woman with good shoes is never ugly.’ And the woman who made the little black dress a staple knew a thing or two about minimalism and quality over quantity.
So the ‘three-shoe rule’ remains unbroken. When I shop for a new pair, I consider a few questions: can I run for a bus (or after a mugger) in these? Are they water, snow and dog-proof? Will they hide the truth about my cloven hooves? Is the colour neutral to enough for my equally limited clothing palette? OK, deep down I’d love to splurge on a pair of red kinky boots with heels, but they’d only get caught in train doors and require me to go about the rest of the time in a sedan chair.
So, next time you see a woman tottering over an unstable surface in sky-high stilettos, she’s probably on her way to a wedding. We can only hope the upside is that she’s got a walk-in shoe cupboard bigger than the average kitchen – and a bowl of Epsoms ready to soak her bunions.