shoes, shoes, shoes...

I have an obsession with shoes. While I have battled this addiction from an early age, the days spent working in the shoe industry brought my obsession to gargantuan proportions. Imagine being surrounded day in and day out with glorious shoes- stacks of them toppling over your desk, each one encrusted with jewels or flowers or ribbons or shells. Exquisite shoes made in Italy with the finest leathers and the most elaborate adornments became a part of everyday life. How fabulous can it get… I even spent a good deal of time in Italy working with the factory, overseeing fit models, sorting through thousands of colors of baby-soft leathers from some of the top suppliers in the world. You come to recognize quality, fit, and the ideal cut of a shoe- traits moving beyond color and adornment, down to what is most elemental about a shoe, and what really makes a good one stand apart from the rest.

While I have a closet full of stiletto heels with every form of adornment imaginable from those lovely days working in New York, we at Cerulean seem to be obsessed with flats and that is what you find on our pages (web or catalog). I have one very special pair of “flats” in my possession that I thought I would share. Cerulean’s favorite world traveler extraordinaire brought me these incredible shoes from Pakistan a few years ago. Handmade in a Punjabi village by a local artisan, the tomato red leather is hand embroidered in various shades of oranges with pink and black. Fantastic pom poms adorn the Minaret-shaped tongue and silver rivets add decoration. The leather sole was nailed on with small brass tacks and the lining is absolutely perfect and supple.

They come no where near fitting my foot, nor would I wear them if they did, but rather have them as an objet to look at every day. My two favorite features are this: each shoe came stuffed with a packet of home-dried potpourri of unidentifiable flower petals possessing a smell with a definite spice, and the sole of each shoe is inscribed with Arabic handwriting, which I am as yet unable to translate. How amazing to have some Punjabi Artisan’s handwriting on the soles of your shoes, perhaps telling the story of the shoe, or of the shoe maker's life. Maybe it curses the silly girl who buys shoes to watch and not to wear. Either way, when we are able to translate, I will let you know…


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