After learning that I had accumulated enough mileage credits to fly to virtually any destination imaginable, it took me only a few seconds to say aloud the word Paris. Years ago I'd visited the city, like so many other hippie kids with a backpack and a hundred bucks that needed to last me. It wasn't the right time to experience a city as culturally alive as Paris, yet its contrasts to the American aesthetic, how it felt to weave through its ancient-ness, poured into my psyche and took root, lodged in me ever since.
On the way to the airport, the thought of sitting in a wicker bistro chair while sipping a glass of vin was enough to transport me, and as my taxi sped by Boeing Field, my gaze fell over the skyline until the rise of hangars became the hills of Montmartre, Harbor Island the Left Bank of the Seine ... et voilà! Paris unveiled itself again.
I suppose I have adopted Paris as my alter-ego city. Its maze of boulevards crowded with mini-cars couldn't be more unlike my newly sprung neighborhood, SUVs the size of my studio condo wedged in along its streets. But any of my friends would tell you another reason I love Paris is because I'm a shoe aficionado - specifically, heels.
Given the combination of my being 5 feet 2 and wanting to look others squarely in the eye and my being Italian, born to immigrants from Naples, my encyclopedic knowledge of shoes is as natural to my small-talk as the subject of weather. Still, I had my concerns before traveling to Paris, the fashion Mecca, that too many years in Seattle might have anesthetized my ability to click along confidently on two pointy high heels. Because no way was I going to be one of those Americans-in-tennis-shoes.
But what I found was the women on the streets of Paris are not overly fashion conscious. Frenchwomen have far less disposable income than Americans. But they are noticeably at ease presenting themselves with feminine individuality. Paradoxically, fashion doesn't appear to dictate in the fashion capital. Creativity, however, does. Why, I wonder, have so many Seattle women settled for the athletic shoe, jeans, and fleece-vest habit? Do they realize, in terms of the art of dressing, how bored they have become?
Fortunately for me, as soon as my airplane touched down, I felt as though my feet belonged. Yeah-hoo, I thought, the natives are friendly! And while some travelers recall the names of restaurants with pride, the loft of my memory is filled with the images of village shops on narrow, winding streets where a pair of shoes caught my eye like a luminous gem.
"Pointy" comes and goes in American shoe aesthetic, but is staple to the European sense of style. I'm forever telling people in Seattle who stare fixedly at my feet that, no, I don't squeeze my toes into the point, the point extends past my toes. And I've taken a lot of flack for the Euro-pointies I prefer in a city that's all about an outdoors-inspired R.E.I. look. Recently, as I stood chitchatting with a friend on a sidewalk in Greenlake, a woman walked by, stopped, looked down, pointed at my shoes and said, "Why are you wearing those? This is Seattle!" - reminding me that even in our most liberal of cities, shoe-tolerance in the minds of some is moot. I sighed. Birkenstockies....
France is situated between two major shoe-exporting countries, Italy and Spain. So it's not unusual to see shoes displayed like high art (actually they are high art, not a subject I wish to defend) on pedestals, lighting cast just so. I limited myself to four pairs because I always travel in the make-do-with-one-carry-on mode, which is sometimes easy, most times dismaying, but always necessary to my peace of mind.
Here is my pick of perfect-vacation shoe memories:
A pair of strappy black heels from Paris, every intimate desire ever imagined gathered en masse and interpreted in these glossy heels. And when the day comes I can no longer manage to walk in them, they will continue to shine like their own bright star from my closet. ... Boots from Provence so butter-soft that, when first the shop owner could not find my size, I refused to accept the catastrophe and demanded he look again! Which worked, by the way. (I am American, after all.) ... Two Spanish shoes-slash-gloves from Cassis by the sea ... The Italian slip-on sandals from Nice, ankle straps tough but not hard....
Whatever the explanation for a woman's fancy for shoes, perhaps the fact that in France it is illegal to work more than 35 hours a week, and that each worker is given six weeks annual vacation time, lends itself to a healthier balance in life. In fact, this fine sense of equilibrium is considered vital to political platforms. Which may be why French women have time to consider themselves in the mirror and are comfortable walking in heels over cobblestone at a pace unhurried.
Just before I left the city, I stopped to listen to an accordion player fill the air with music. On his feet, a pair of pointy-black dress shoes, decades old, polished for performance. So, along with the change in my pockets, I threw him the kind of kiss where you scrunch your fingers together at your lips and release in an exaggerated gesture, letting your hand spread wide as you brandish your show of gratitude before yelling, Bravo!
Back home in Seattle, I wear my heels that step with pride over the looks they draw, and kick away even the slightest possibility of settling for shoes that belong, to my eye, only on the basketball court.[[In-content Ad]]
