Decoding : I am not Cinderella

 "Shoes like these should not be locked in a closet ! They should be living a life of scandal, and passion and getting screwed in an alleyway by a billionaire while his frigid wife waits in the limo thinking that he just went back into the bar to get his cellphone. These are cute too." ( In her Shoes, 2005 )


My feet hurt so much. Yesterday, I went shopping to find new boots for winter, as every woman of the northern hemisphere might be doing right now. And there was this pair, with platform heels : so IT. It took me five seconds inside of it to realize my error. Those boots were not boots, they were mediaeval torture instrument, and literally broke my feet. While massaging my aching extremities, I had a very philosophical thinking about women and shoes.


Yves Saint Laurent - Rupert Sanderson - Raphael Young

  For me, shoes are the main symbol of the human evolution. We are not primates anymore, nor savages. We don't walk barefooted because we had the intelligence to invent something that would protect us from the cold, from the wounding ground. But, as every wonderful human's creation, things turned bad. Especially for women. Indeed, men stopped wearing heels after the French revolution and the disappearance of the monarchy ... Ah, rascals ! I don't know if I had been traumatised by the stories of the tiny Chinese women's feet, or by fitting in the childhood, but I am not a shoe's addict. Clothes, yes. Bags, oh yes ! But shoes ... ( grimace ). I just need something to wear, something that will allow me to run after my bus, to go downstairs and upstairs ... Simply, to be well in my shoes.

Alexander Wang - Manolo Blahnik

 So, if I see shoes with heels that I find great to look at, my brain thinks 'nice work, designer, but this will stay in the museum of oddity that is a shoes shop' not 'I want'em ! I want'em !' as most of the women would think. And so, that is my big philosophical question : am I really a woman ??? Do I have something missing ? Bad chromosome ? Big shock in the head at birth ? Am I less feminine than other women if I don't pledge to Louboutin or Jimmy Choo ? One look at those shoes makes me suffer. And piling them into my cupboard, what a waste of money ! Oh Holy Anna Wintour, I think I need a therapy !



Dior - Salvatore Ferragamo - Vivienne Westwood

  And then, I come to my senses. I am as I am. No diktat can force me to dash around with Armadillos. My vision of fashion is freedom. But, there would always be someone to tell me : 'You can't say never if you've never tried !', which is verbatim what I was told a night in Bodmin, a little town in Cornwall, England. Except that the subject of the debate was cigarette ... I don't really remember the rest of the night, which was quite wild, as every English teenager's night is, but I am certain of a thing : it is my personal decision not to smoke. A decision which had to do with wealth, yes, but also taste ( oh that awful flavour ) and aesthetics ( if you think you look cool with your cancer stick at your fingertips, don't expect me to compliment you ). It is the very same thing with shoes. I respect girls who wear heels ( I might even admire their ability of balance ), but I choose not to wear some, because I think about my feet, my back, and ... my sense of ridicule.


Marc Jacobs - Nicholas Kirkwood - Giuseppe Zanotti



If I trust the quote of In her Shoes, it would make me someone uptight, an anti-enchantress. But I don't need John Galliano's crazy pink platform shoes to let it all hang out. I can be pretty crazy, without alcohol, without cigs, without heels. Every woman her style. Mine is classy clothes, ballerina-style shoes and a twisted imagination and humor. And about being sexy ... the men I've met who looked at my shoes were not potential lovers, if you see what I mean. I am not going to lose my stilletos to find the Prince Charming, nor ZU shoes to put them all at my feet. I just need to be ... myself. And I am free to change my mind if I want, that's the privilege of a woman ... These Nicholas Kirkwood are cute, aren't they ...?