A passion for fashionable feet

WHEN a court heard how a Dublin woman tumbled down the stairs after the heel snapped on her expensive boots, her pain was felt by women everywhere.

Not only did Lindsay McCormack suffer shock, bruises and the throbbing of a badly sprained ankle, but she had to break the second heel so she could limp away safely to fetch help. Two bootiful boots rendered uninhabitable in one fell swoop. Ouch.

The fact she had spent €250 on the faulty footwear and worn them a mere 32 times only added to the agony.

But while there is always a risk of getting hurt in love, that hasn’t cooled the ardour of Irish women when it comes to their passion for fashionable feet.

Fuller pockets and elastic plastic have fanned the flames in recent years and now it seems one whiff of newly buffed leather is enough to turn a sensible shopper into a weak-kneed slave to the captivating charms of a new shoe.

Once she has stroked the slender heel or run a finger over a smooth surface, there is no going back. Flirtation is followed by courting and before long - certainly before next season - the marriage is made.

Kevin Kelly, manager of Fitzpatrick’s in Dublin’s Grafton Street, has witnessed many such unions between customers and the Dior delights and fabulous Fendis that adorn the store’s elegant front windows.

“We do get women who come in and hand over €500 straight away. They come in, see the shoe they want and that’s it - they have to have it. But others have to wait. So they come in a second time and check the sizes. They’re in again and they ask us to put a pair away for them. And then a few weeks later, they buy.

“It’s nice because it means it isn’t only the very rich who are buying designer shoes. Young women aren’t afraid to say I want a pair of Dior too and I’m going to get them.”

Carl Scarpa took a chance when they opened the first of their nine Irish stores in 1987 but it was a gamble that paid off when prosperity brought the country from down at heel to up in fashion.

But Charlie McGrath, manager of the Grafton Street outlet, said women here don’t tend to throw caution to the wind: “People are treating themselves a bit more but they’re looking for fashion, not fad, so we don’t sell something that’s going to go out of fashion in a few months.”

A survey recently found the average British woman spent €45,000 on shoes in her lifetime - echoing the cry of TV’s favourite shoeaholic, Carrie Bradshaw, when she wailed while on the point of eviction that she had “$40,000 worth of shoes and no place to live”.