Monthly Archive for December, 2009

See those shoes, the one in the picture, those are the gorgeous and iconic Roger Vivier Pilgrim pump with silver buckles shoes that Catherine Deneuve wore in Belle du Jour. Those shoes, for years, have been on my “someday” list. I just want one pair of Roger Vivier shoes to call my own. And yes I know full well that slipping on one of the shoes that Catherine Deneuve wore will not turn me into her. Having these shoes will not allow me to speak French with a perfect Parisian accent. I will not have long blond hair, an air of cool goddessy beauty, and I will still have days when I wear squirrel pajamas all day and think beer and pizza seems like a good idea( something I am sure Catherine has NEVER done). Knowing that has not stopped me from wanting these beauties.

My years of longing have inspired some settling. I have had a pair of Banana Republic copies. I once had a pair of suede shoes that had a similar pilgrim/pirate vibe that I wore to death and that I miss often. What held me back from owning a pair of Roger Vivier shoes? Simple, they are expensive. $585 for flats expensive.

There is a reason Roger’s shoes are so expensive. Roger Vivier was a French fashion designer who specialized in shoes. He was the very first to create a stiletto heel. For many years he was the shoe designer for Givenchy. His designs and construction were so exceptional that he was considered the “Fragonard of the shoe” and “the Fabergé of Footwear. The Fragonard and Faberge of anything never comes cheap. Really, the Faberge of falafel has to be double the cost of your ordinary falafel.

Vivier’s shoes have been worn by Ava Gardner, Gloria Guinness,The Beatles and most recently Suri Cruise( the only child lucky enough to have custom made Roger Viver pilgrim flats). Queen Elizabeth II wore Roger Vivier shoes for her coronation.

And now his shoes are being worn by me. Yep, those babies are MINE. MINE, all mine!!!!
How, you ask? After a lovely champagne luncheon with Une femme de une certain age, who had taken me out to lunch to celebrate passing my first test, I did a little shopping. I went into Neiman Marcus. I looked at handbags on sale and found nothing I loved. Then I looked for an ornament for our Christmas tree and found nothing but a $150 candle that I put down as quickly as I read the price. I was about to leave the store and then I though, hmmm….maybe I will stop by the shoe department.

I took a walk through the department I saw some over processed blond starlet shopping for shoes who was seemingly seeking anonymity behind big sunglasses and was simultaneously exposed in a big way in a tee shirt that was falling off one shoulder to reveal her bralessness. One would think I would have kept my eyes on her wardrobe malfunction in the making but truth be told I could not take my eyes off her over-fried, dried and extra-crunchy blond hair. I wanted to interrupt her shoe shopping and take her over to the Frederik Fekkai counter and suggest that she buy gallons of his Protein RX Reparative Treatment Mask and that she should keep this stuff on her head 23 hours a day and maybe after a month or two the stuff on top of her head would once again look like human hair and not some kind of mutant hay meant for kindling forest fires.

Still considering my intervention and thinking about adding a trip to the lingerie department to introduce the shoe seeking starlet to a brazier, I strolled over to the sale section after admiring all the shoes that cost more than my car payment and that is when I saw it. There it was in a ten medium sitting on the sales rack. I picked it up and examined it, disbelieving my eyes. I looked for a flaw or perhaps it was a mistake and they weren’t really on sale. But there was nothing wrong and they really were on sale. I grabbed a sales association and insisted on seeing the mate of this beauty. As she went off to find my shoe I went into a kind of shock that they could be mine. I silently said to myself, “Today is the day they come home with me. Today could be the day when my Roger Vivier dream comes true.”

When I got them on my feet I quit thinking and I started feeling. The feeling was a transcendent/ trans-verbal experience. It is difficult to put into the words the feeling of having the kind of shoes that Wicked Witches of all four corners would kill for. The sales associate interrupted my moment, “How do they feel?” She asked. I heard in her tone a subtext of sales seeking. What she really was asking was, “Are you buying these shoes?”
I ignored her subtext and answered her,”They feel like they are coming home with me.”
I pressed my Neiman’s card into her hand. I feared if I didn’t seal the deal quickly something would happen and the price would go up and the shoes would have to stay in the store and I would have to leave without them or maybe flying monkeys would drop me in a poppy field and I would wake up next to a brainless scarecrow, a heartless tin man and a fraidy-cat feline.
Happily the sales associate returned with my shoes in a bag and my receipt to sign. I signed the receipt with enormous enthusiasm, it was as if my signature was saying “Yes!”

I am not sure how I got so lucky to get my Roger Vivier pilgrim flats for such a fantastic price. I am not sure how someday became today. Perhaps it was my fantasy of doing a well meaning mitzvah for the starlet with the hair of straw that opened the door to my miracle moment in the shoe department at Neiman Marcus. I think it is more likely that I benefited from the amazing shopping mojo of Une Femme who is a kind of Glinda the Good Witch when it comes to shopping( really, I have the best luck when shopping with her or even shopping after I see her. I have found two pairs of long longed for shoes at incredible prices after lunching with ). Whatever the reason, the shoes are mine. And in case any Wicked Witches are reading this, my guard dog is watching them so don’t try anything funny—she’ll drop a doghouse on you.

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