The Shoe Canon

Shoes. I've been thinking about shoes. Such potential for fetishizing, and you know how I love a good object of fetish (oh please, won't I ever shut up about my fetishes?)

I wrote many months ago about my favorite clothes through the years. I thought I'd add an endnote to that post, about the shoes that have held special meaning for me.

Here are the ten seminal pairs of shoes from my personal Shoe Canon:


1. The orthopedic shoes of my childhood. I got to choose every year until I was seven or eight from the three colors available: navy, burgundy, and brown. Simply dreadful. Why orthopedic shoes? I was quite pigeon-toed. And guess what! I still am. I like to think of it as a delightful quirk.

2. My aunt's black suede grommeted platform shoes. She had tiny feet, so I could play dress-up in them without falling over. I think the contrast between my clunky orthopedics and these marvels of glamor made me think that life, or at least shoes, would not always be so drab and defeating...

3. Patent leather tap shoes with wide grosgrain ribbon ties. I adored my tap instructor, George. He was about a million years old and had been in vaudeville, and could still tap the hell out of a floor.



4. Ballet slippers. I remember the excitement of sewing the little pieces of elastic across the instep.

5. Black Capezio character shoes, my first heels. Same now as they were in 1983. Let's be honest, they really don't look all that thrilling, do they? It's hard to imagine what I saw in them, but back then the faux leather and ingenue heel screamed possibility.




6. Macdougal Alley Skimmers. When I just googled them, what did I find? The only reference online seems to be a comment I made ages ago on someone else's blog: "The '80s for me are typified by a quintessentially NYC fashion: the MacDougal Alley Skimmer. Capezio flats in about eighty colors; many girls I knew collected them like girls in the '50s collected cashmere sweaters." My one lone pair was electric blue.

7. Steel-toed motorcycle boots. In college, I thought they made me look tough and sexy. Who knows, maybe they did, but it's up for debate. Though I could certainly kick frat boy ass if I needed to...

8. The hiking boots that I wore every day in Israel, when I wasn't wearing sandals. Those boots took me across deserts and up Masada. I absolutely destroyed them that year.

9. Sarge's army boots: when we first fell in love, he was a drill sergeant in the Army Reserves. Once a month, he'd leave college to do a drill weekend at the nearby Fort. I loved to watch him polish those boots in preparation; he was a brilliant, meticulous, patient, and dextrous polisher. I knew it was a very good sign.

10. Hedgehog's first shoes: Irish linen slippers with a linen button on each. So ridiculously expensive, so difficult to tuck her fat little feet into them properly. So lovely.



I asked you about clothes in my old post, let me ask now about shoes, about the special, meaningful pair in your personal history.

So, nu?

Clothes Horse: A Brief History

I love clothes, for the way they costume, disguise, transmogrify, inspire, keep me warm...I love clothes, and the little bits of things, earrings, lace scarves, shoes, that come with...

I've had some memorable bits of sartorial flotsam and jetsam in my past...

My earliest truly adored outfit was a lavender wool suit my mother bought me especially to wear to her Doctoral graduation day.  It had a special blouse to go with, lace and silk and pearl buttons.  I remember mom in her doctoral robes and hood and funny puffy hat, I beaming at her side, a vision in lavender and pride.

In the the '80s, when I was in high school, I had a favorite outfit, my party uniform.  It was a perfect black cocktail dress that had been my Aunt Abby's in the early '60s.  I liked my dresses short, so modified it a bit with an ad hoc hem.  It zippered up the side and was of some sort of rayon.  I do shudder to think how I paired that dress with neon green fishnet stockings, purchased in a rash moment at Canal Jeans (a NYC icon of bygone days), and sometimes turquoise satin sharp-toed, spike-heeled pumps.  Dear God.  Yet, I still think fondly of it.

Also from that era, a brown suede coat, which I liked to think of as Blonde-on-Blonde Bob Dylan.  Especially meaningful because one night a boy I crushed on, Jonathan was his name, he had a wild mane of curly golden-brown and was quite unintelligent really, except maybe in the maths...anyway, one night at an outdoor after-party under the Brooklyn Bridge, he borrowed it and wore it.  I still have a clear picture of him, perched up on the guardrail over the East River, wind ruffling his curls; the jacket that was snug across my breasts hung loose on his skinny frame... when he gave it back, it was as if it had alchemized, that's how much, in the privacy of my room, I stared at it and sniffed it and caressed it in lieu of sniffing and caressing the boy himself...

My wardrobe from that era was a mixture of vintage dresses from stores in the Village (there were so many vintage dresses to be had then, a plague of vintage dresses),  wonderful clothes from my mom's college years (two suede jackets come to mind, one russet red, the other olive green, both brass-buttoned), things plundered from closets in our attic (a veritable silk-and-wool history of the women in my family) and then secreted away in the depths of my enormous Victorian mahogany wardrobe...

In college, some of these things persisted, but my freshman favorite outfit was much less fanciful: a pair of jeans, motorcycle boots, a snug t-shirt, and an enormous black cardigan, sterling silver hoop earrings, and a sizable silver skull ring a la Keith Richards.  When I moved into an apartment off-campus with two girlfriends (we called it "The Cathouse" if that gives any indication of the flavor of the place), we were all roughly the same size and shape and pooled our clothes.  I mean that literally--our clothes were kept in a sort of communal heap in the livingroom.  My favorite Cathouse dress belonged to my roommate, and it was so short and wispy that I can't believe now that I wore it in public.  This I paired with borrowed six-hole Doc Martens (at the time I imagined I was being insouciant--it was the '90s after all).  And is it really any wonder that I didn't get to my papers and readings till the last minute...I was too busy tugging at my short skirts, adjusting my stockings, staring into mirrors, and reapplying lipstick...

Over these last years, the vintage dresses have receded into the background, the hems frayed past the point of no return, the buttons hanging by threads, most retired and some given a hero's farewell...they still turn up now and again when we're clearing out a closet, and I feel a fond little feeling and smile a fond little smile as they slip through my fingers...

More recently, I think lovingly of my wedding outfit. I spent 108 dollars on the dress, a creamy gold lace shirtwaisty formitted-bodice thing that I purchased on a whim in a little boutique in Soho. My mother was chagrined that she wasn't in on the decision--but as we were married by a judge at the courthouse, the dress was never fated to be anything more elaborate, expensive, or thrilling to choose. I walked in, tried it on, and bought it. I think it was charming. The shoes were cream colored satin kitten-heeled mary-janes, with little satin-covered buttons at the sides. Perfect for a courthouse wedding, and the dress is now stored all crumpled up in a shoebox, that's just the sort of dress it is.

I also dearly loved one very peculiar accessory: a snood (yes, snood) that I bought when I lived in Jerusalem, inspired by the pretty Modern Orthodox ladies I saw everywhere. It was a perfect blue, and I thought I looked quite fetching in it. When I arrived back in the States, wearing it right off the plane, Sarge took one look at me and laughed. Laughed! "A snood," he shook his head at me. "A snood!" And laughed again as he gently pulled it right off my hair. That was the last word on that.

And now I must ask, if you're willing to share, what is your favorite piece of clothing, past or present? I really really do want to know.