More on shoes............

As I consistently maintain, shoes make the outfit.  Not handbags, although they and other accessories add to the overall picture.  "Nobody cares what handbag you're wearing.  Now people are focussed on whether you know what shoe to wear," says an article confirming my own fashion sense in this week's 'Maclean's', by Anne Kingston.

Which is why more and more stores are dramatically expanding their shoe departments -- such as The Bay's flagship in Toronto, which now boasts a 50,000-sq.ft. shoe sanctuary on the ground floor.  I would be in paradise.  I did not know that footwear in Canada is a $5.2 billion industry.  "Footwear offers a longer life cycle in terms of preserving margin," the article goes on. 

You also get a much bigger bang for your fashion buck with a pair of shoes than, say a very pricey dress.  The power of a shoe goes back to Cinderella, whose glass slipper won her a prince.  Tamara Mellon, co-founder of Jimmy Choo, says that shoes are no long what you buy to complement the dress; they are the centrepiece of the look.  Absolutely.  Put on any 'little black dress', which I usually make myself, don a spectacular pair of shoes, throw on a few other upper-body accessories, the right pair of earrings and you're done. 

"It doesn't summon body-image anxieties like dresses do.  You reject the shoe as not comfortable or the right colour; it doesn't reject you.  And high heels offer the benefit of what anthropologists call 'lordosis' -- a lift of the behind and an arch of the back commonly seen in primate display," the article adds.  I never feel "dressed" until I have put on my shoes. 

I always say that a pair of jeans with sneakers conveys a completely different image and message than does a pair with high-heeled sandals or gorgeous boots.  I have never abandoned my high heels and keep all 75 pairs in good repair at all times.  As I said to my chiropractor in Ottawa, "Your job is to keep me in high heels."  "So far, it's working," he replied.