When BeautifullyInv retweeted a post by Dress With Courage entitled, A Woman’s Right To Shoes, I couldn’t resist clicking over to have a read. The post quotes a Daily Express article from a couple of months back which claims that women spend £16,000 on shoes in a lifetime!!

Now, Elissa, of Dress With Courage admits she’s not much of a shoe girl. But she asked, at the end of her post, what’s your relationship with shoes? And I felt that the answer to that deserved a whole post all of its own.

Elissa quotes:

“Shoes are a collector’s item, whether women realize they perceive them that way or not,” says Suzanne Ferriss, PhD, editor of Footnotes: On Shoes. Consider how shoes are often stored prominently on shelves, or in custom-made acrylic boxes. “They’re like sculptures,” says Ferriss. Collecting shoes causes an adrenalin-like rush similar to that a baseball card collector feels when landing a new find.

It’s true. I have a few pairs of “sensible” shoes: black ballerina pumps, black court shoes, nude courts. But then I have many pairs of beautiful shoes, brightly coloured shoes, interestingly patterned shoes, completely ridiculous shoes that I can barely stand in, let alone walk in, that I will never never get rid of because they are simply too special.

This pair is my current favourite. When I spotted them in Grazia earlier in the year, I knew I had to have these Pierre Hardy for Gap shoes but my local store didn’t get them in and I sort of gave up hope of finding them, until I saw this post over on bargainista fashionista. So I sent Super Stylish Sis off to hunt down a pair. Or two. Yes, I confess, she got me both colour-ways, as I just couldn’t choose. So now they are sitting wrapped in tissue paper in a couple of empty shoe boxes I had. Turns out the heels are too big for everyday wear but they are just so pretty that I know I will keep them forever!

According to the survey of 3,000 women, by Gocompare.com, the average woman has about 19 pairs of shoes – three pairs with heels, six pairs of flip-flops, sandals, ballet pumps or wedges, three pairs of boots and four pairs of “foxy-style” shoes for nights out. And they also have two pairs of work shoes and another two or so “random” purchases.

So I decided to test just how “average” I am and make an inventory of my shoes. Turns out I’m far from average: I own 52 pairs of shoes. Broken down into:

5x flip-flops, 4x sandals, 2x espadrille, 16x ballerina pumps, 1x brogues, 5x trainers, 7x courts, 1x shoe boots, 2x wedge boots, 3x ankle boots, 2x knee high boots, 2x EMU boots, 1x wellington boots and one pair of “going out” shoes.

I can’t explain my love for shoes but I think it probably has something to do with the fact that they can change a whole outfit. One pair of shoes can turn an outfit from a little bit blah to something really quite special.

As Rose says, in In Her Shoes:

“When I feel bad I like to treat myself. Clothes never look any good. Food just makes me fatter. Shoes always fit.”

And so it goes, no matter whether I have no clue what dress size I might be from store to store, I am always a size 5 (UK, 38 EU – if anyone’s interested!). When a pair of jeans feels a little tight or I’m feeling bloated, any pair of shoes – from a pair of purple Converse to a pair of sequined sandals to a pair of black court shoes – that I put on my feet make me smile.

Now it’s your turn to confess, what’s your relationship with shoes?