How Much Are Those Manolos in the Window?

“I would never date a man with bad shoes,” Lloyd-Sgambati says. “If they’re scuffed, or he doesn’t take care of them, you know he doesn’t take care of anything else, like his hygiene.”

Hey, wait a minute! I’m clean, dammit! That hurts. But Mindy Friedman, 37, a lawyer who now runs her own consulting firm in Bella Vista, agrees. Friedman’s shoe collection is “90-plus,” and she is explaining to me their nuances and subtle differences.

For court, she needs something “low-heeled and conservative,” because she wants people to listen to what she’s saying and not have attention drawn to her look. I am feeling the need for a chart to organize all this new information … so for court, in the winter … low-heeled suede! To be in control, in the summertime, wait, don’t tell me, looking at the chart here … high-heeled pumps!

I’m starting to see why the quantities pile up, and even to glimpse a tortured logic behind the excess. If shoes are an expression of mood, and there are unwritten rules about how and when to express the moods, then it follows that one needs as many options as possible. “I’m a mood dresser,” says Friedman, introducing me to another concept, the idea that people put thought into what they wear. “And shoes are expressive.”

Furthermore, Swarthmore history professor Tim Burke, who runs a website discussing, among other things, consumer culture, points out that shopping is often trivialized because it’s a female domain. “I have three shelves of books from Amazon that I haven’t read yet,” he says. “Is that any different?” Burke points out that most writing about consumer culture is from the perspective that random or habitual buying is a negative use of our resources and energy, but there is really no good reason to take that position. “At worst, it’s neutral,” he says, “and frequently, it’s an expression of self, no different from painting on a canvas.”

From talking to these women, I’m getting the impression that it is possible in some areas to buy shoes in stores that don’t have “Mart” or “Warehouse” in their names. The quantity of shoes is what first inspired me to ask the questions, but to the aficionados, there are issues of quality as well. The several hundred pairs of shoes they mention are not the stock from Payless. These are handpicked attention-getters and status symbols, and one adjective keeps resurfacing: Italian.

From the Chinese political prisoner to the Honduran schoolchild, foreigners have always loved making our footwear. But the Italians, curiously, are actually able to afford food with the profits. What’s up with Italy, and how did it become associated with quality shoes? The last time I saw Italy in the news for anything, they were electing prostitutes to important government positions, and in the history books, they’re known mostly for running away. This is not a country with a strong sense of either elitism or organization, and the idea that they do something better than anyone else in the world strikes me as questionable at best. How about the Germans? Did you ask them to make a boot?