Forget the house, the children or even
Flopsy the pet rabbit; it’s time to turn your divorce lawyer’s attention to
this thorny question: when a marriage fails, who gets custody of the shoes?
No, seriously. It’s all about the heels.
Daniel Shak, a US hedge fund manager, is currently suing his ex-wife, Beth, for
35 per cent of her $1 million (£640,000) collection of footwear (comprising an
admittedly gobsmacking 1,200 pairs – including 700 Christian Louboutins, with
their distinctive red soles), which he claims she kept secret from him during
their bitter divorce three years ago.
Mrs Shak, a feisty poker player, has
responded by asking how he failed to notice that the closet in the master
bedroom was crammed from floor to ceiling with shoes. (And also, presumably,
how he missed her performances on the channel ShoesTV and in documentaries such
as God Save My Shoes, and even failed to notice her new blog,shoesrforever.com).
Yet given our love affair with shoes, it
is surprising more divorce cases aren’t based around these prized possessions.
While some women try to divide the female sex into shoe women or bag women, no
item of adornment has inveigled its way into our psyche like the shoe.
Cinderella without her glass shoe? A nobody. Dorothy before she put on her ruby
slippers? Left to moulder alone in Kansas. And can you imagine Hans Christian
Andersen’s doomed Karen forced to dance to her death because of her fascination
with a Red It Bag? Never.
Rachelle Bergstein, author of Women From
the Ankle Down: The Story of Shoes and How They Define Us, pinpoints the
arrival of Carrie in Sex and the City on our screens in 1998 as the moment it
became acceptable for a woman to be obsessed with shoes.
But surely it goes back further than
that. Our forefathers recognised the power of footwear. In the 14th century,
the length of a pointed shoe was in proportion to the status of a noble person,
while Louis XIV later banned all but aristocrats from wearing shoes with red
heels.
Yet before you
think we are now all egalitarians in our limited-edition trainers, a study from
the University
of Kansas
published this month revealed that we can judge 90 per cent of a stranger’s
personal characteristics just by looking at their shoes (curiously, the study
showed that ankle boots were worn by people with more aggressive personalities,
and uncomfortable-looking shoes by calmer people).
As for the
deeper psychological – and biological – meanings of our footwear obsession,
Freud’s famous question “What do women want?” appears to have been answered by
Boguslaw Pawlowski, a professor at Wroclaw University in Poland. He came up
with the formula for perfect legs – 30.5in legs for a 5ft 4in woman – which is
about five per cent longer than the average leg length, meaning that slipping
on a pair of Louboutins or Manolo Blahniks could vastly improve your chances of
happiness (and possibly meeting Mr Right).
Yet Daniel Shak,
who sees his ex-wife’s collection less as “fine art”, as she describes it, and
more as a potential money-spinner, may have a point. Shoes are increasingly
becoming an investment, as Pat Frost, head of fashion at Christie’s, points
out. “There’s a wide range of people who invest, from fashionistas through to
shoe museums,” she says. Unworn shoes in small sizes are proving particularly
profitable. “I’d say 18th-century brocade shoes are very collectable – you’re
looking at £15,000-£20,000 – but more recent ones, such as Roger Vivier for
Christian Dior comma heels, are really the holy grail for collectors. And
Christian Louboutin is only just starting,” she tells me.
Yet Shak may be
disappointed if he hopes to make a fortune from his ex-wife’s shoes. Not only
does she say she’s already given away hundreds of pairs, Beth Shak is a rank
amateur compared to Imelda Marcos, widow of the former Philippine president,
who was said to own 3,000 pairs of shoes (although she always insisted that it
was only 1,060).
And both are
cast into the shade by romantic novelist Danielle Steele, who has 6,000 pairs
of Louboutins alone. Louboutin himself said of Steele: “She comes to Paris, and
she literally buys everything. Then she flies back to New York, says, 'I’m a
little disappointed there’s nothing in the store,’ and walks out with 80 pairs.
She is super.”
Meanwhile, if
Mrs Shak really wants to keep her husband’s hands off her designer sandals, she
could take a lesson from an unknown woman in Armenia. The woman, who lived
around 3,500 BC and had size four feet, managed to hide a pair of cowhide
moccasins in a cave – perhaps to thwart the Chacolithic Age-equivalent of a
hedge fund manager-husband. But she hid them so well they stayed undiscovered
until 2008.
Now that’s what
you call true devotion to footwear.
How devoted are you to your footwear/shoes???
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