Sometimes a woman’s fetsih for shoes is exaggerated other times, she could be a charter member of the Footwear Club. I remember my mother, usually be a bit of a spendthrift could somehow always justify any shoe-related purchase as being a matter of necessity. She would say to my father that he surely didn’t expect her to walk the streets barefoot. Neither apparently could he expect her to not have a different pair for every outfit either.

It must be genetic since I don’t think I’ve ever been out with my sister anywhere without her seeing a pair of shoes she liked. Just walking down the street after a meal or movie when all the stores are closed, shoes will still jump out at her from the shop windows as if calling her name. She hides some of her purchases from her husband and apparently he never notices her feet always boast perfectly matched footwear.

My mother in fact explained to me that my rather petite sister who’s a devout born-again Christian has even been known to say that the moment she can no longer manage to hobble around in high heels that as far as she’s concerned that’s when it will be time for her “to be with Jesus.” Trust me, she never takes the Lord’s name in vain so she’s deadly serious.

Now according to LA Times staff writer John M. Glionna (11/05/06), the most infamous shoe collector in the world, Imelda Marcos is going to launch her own fashion line of accessories, even shoes. When she and her deposed dictator husband fled the Philippines in 1986, investigators later found 1,200 pairs of size 8 1/2 AA shoes at the Manila presidential palace and 1,600 more pairs in another Marcos home.

Imelda seems to have no regrets, as she explains, “There’s more to me than just shoes. At the time, Filipinos needed a star in the dark of night. They needed a standard. That was my role, to show the way so everyone could become a star. Because mass follows class, never the other way around.”

Apparently, my sis isn’t the only woman to see shoes as a higher calling.