At even the most conservative estimate, I own about 100 pairs of shoes. I have smart high heels for taking taxi rides in and flat ones for walking in. I have elegant black ankle boots for looking-smart-but-still-being-able-to-walk in, and pointy little witchy shoes for embarrassing my daughter in.
I own seven pairs of sneakers, two sets of wellington boots, four pairs of loafers and five lots of slippers. Some shoes are furnished with extraordinary, sculptural wedge-shaped heels, and others tipped with tiny stilettos. I own artisanal clogs that would befit a Quaker woodsmith, strappy snakeskin stilettos by Louis Vuitton and black-toed Chanel slingbacks that imbue the most banal of outfits with instant chic. I own Saint Laurent Patti Smith-style army boots, Marc Jacobs jackboots and a fabulous pair of banana-yellow boots from Céline with a fit so narrow they near give me a cardiac arrest each time I try and remove them.
The volume of shoes, and the creeping accumulation of their boxes, which are piled in stacked columns of teetering shoe-scrapers in every corner of the bedroom, are now the subject of considerable marital tension. The discussion usually begins with a question: “When are you going to do something about all these bloody shoes?” And ends with me arguing that excessive shoe ownership is, in fact, a job requirement. Which is facetious yet incontrovertible: if a fashion editor can’t own a stupidly tremendous number of shoes, then who the hell can?