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Despite my red carpet fashion blogs, my regular costume
design gigs, and my status as a seamstress, I’m not particularly “into”
clothes. I mean, I like clothes, and I like nice
clothes, but I’m not the kind of woman who has a closet full of fabulous
clothes, or who relies on shopping therapy as stress relief. I consider clothes
shopping a chore, not a reward.
I do, however, love shoes. I love shopping for them, I love wearing them, I love looking at them.
I don’t love designer shoes, though. Well, that’s not
exactly true: I long for Steve Madden boots and Christian Louboutin pumps. But
the shoes that I love to buy – and that I actually do buy – are multiple pairs of cheap but fun styles from Payless
Shoes and Famous Footwear. I own a pair of leopardskin ballet flats, a pair of
teal patent pumps, two pairs of red
patent pumps, black booties, black high-heeled boots, tan suede high-heeled boots, tan riding boots, houndstooth pumps, silver rhinestone flip flops, brown
oxfords, five different pairs of black flats (patent, with bows and
rhinestones, with just bows, suede, and square toes), black strappy sandals
with glitter, black strappy sandals without glitter, black patent slingbacks, white
pumps, ivory pumps, bone sandals, two pairs of double-wide sneakers, sturdy
walking shoes, and a pair of oversized pink Hello Kitty bedroom slippers. And
those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
Now, you’d expect a collection like that to be carefully
tucked into stacks of clear plastic boxes, each carefully labeled, and organized
by category. But you’d be wrong. I own a circular shoe rack, and quite a few of
the shoes that I wear less often (including several pairs of character and
dance shoes that I only wear when I perform) are hanging on it. But the vast
majority of my collection is carelessly tossed in the bottom of the closet.
There’s something very satisfying about that chaos, for me.
You know how movies show people dreaming about being rich by imagining that
they’re rolling in piles of cash, tossing it up in the air, rubbing it against
their faces? That’s what this chaotic pile of shoes is for me: it’s the dream
of reveling in something that I love, that I have managed to acquire a large
amount of, without taking away from the more important things.
And not only that, but since I almost never throw out my
shoes, this pile that I’m reveling in is also my history. I have the shoes I had
on when my husband proposed, the ones I wore when I got married, the boots my
husband teasingly refers to as my “Captain Kirk boots,” the shoes I wore at my
mom’s funeral when I was pregnant with my daughter, the shoes I’m wearing in
the first family photo with both my kids in it, and the shoes I wore on stage
the first time I performed with my (now) husband. It’s like a whole closet full
of family history.
And with my family, how could our history possibly be summed
up in a neat, tidy series of organized boxes? Nope, my family is best described
by chaos.
And shoes.
