where art thou gucci?

topic number five: shoes, a personal love story

I make no apologies for my love of shoes; from a gorgeous gucci sandal, lovely louboutin or classy chanel to a sexy ali rahimi, I find them all divine. This is lust you say, not love? Either way, heel to toe, there is deep affection.

I pamper my shoes by housing each pair individually in my closet. Shoes are organized by style and then by color. A friend of mine has taken this a step further by attaching a photograph on the front of each box for easy viewing. Somehow this seems a little too impersonal for me, like putting a name tag on your loved one's lapel. But then again, not everyone is as in love with their shoes as I am. Instead I use perfectly sized clear boxes from the Container Store. And periodically, I make an effort to rotate shoes out of my closet for cleaning and repair.

But having an organized closet where you can find everything because you can see everything can have a down side...my husband sees everything too! Thus, came my promise to Gary-to donate an existing pair of shoes aka: physically remove a pair of shoes from my wardrobe (and sometimes this hurts) whenever another shoe purchase is made aka: a new love appears.

This culling if you will, not only helps keep my closet updated, it keeps it in shape. The shoe promise along with my dear friend Paula motivated me to do the same with my clothes:t-shirts, blouses, socks and lingerie. "How many white shirts does one really need?" Thank you Paula! What this accomplishes is amazing. Surprisingly, especially for me, is that I now never really have to take time to reorganize my closet unless I want to, but not because I need to.

Watching and/or helping friends yank out their entire wardrobe every spring- clothes piled high with belts, bags and boxes everywhere is time consuming. It can take a day just to try on each and every piece of owned clothing prior to sorting. Try making the promise instead. This requires less time, it is easy with practice, and actually, over time it could even save you some money. Yes, loving and dumping, at the same time. Heartless, but helpful.

feng shoes

My mother is an authority on many things, but you should really listen to her when it comes to shoes. Why? Experience by pure volume. There was once a time when my mother had over one hundred pairs of shoes. She's not a compulsive shoe buyer; she's a size five. So when the woman comes across a decent pair that actually fits, she buys them and keeps them forever. I don't blame her.


It is kind of shocking that I'm not crazy about shoes. I'm the progeny of not one, but two people who have interesting shoe backgrounds. Way before my time, my father sold shoes and was pretty great at it. I go to him just as much as my mother with some of my shoes needs, though his are more along the lines of "Krazy glue? The heel is falling off," or "Help! These boots are stuck!" (They were so tight, we nearly had to cut them off.) Now that I'm not growing so much any more, shoes have become more appealing, but clumsy as I am, I don't know how comfortable I am scuffing up anything over fifty dollars.


When it comes to organization of shoes, I always yield to my mother. Again, clumsy as I am, the last thing I need is to be tripping over the articles supposed to be keeping my feet safe. This being said, I am superstitious to a fault, and there is one shoe storage rule I follow unfailingly: your shoes should be pointing out, towards the closet door or out of the room. That way you are always poised to be going places.