A Love of Shoes

I’ll never forget when my sister was pregnant with my niece (who is now 6 years old with 2 loose teeth – so grown up!!) I found a photo in Vogue of a baby/toddler sitting in the middle of a pile of her mommy’s shoes, trying them on. The baby had very curly hair just like my sister so I ripped out the image, showed my family, and was certain that this would be the image of my then unborn niece. Well, it turns out, I think I actually had that baby from the Vogue photo. My Z has super curly hair, as you know and a major MAJOR love of shoes. Here’s how I know…

Sometimes, when the house is quiet and I know my little Z must be up to no good, I walk around the corner and find her here…

She loves to stand in front of the basket where she and I keep our shoes (my husband’s feet are too large for his shoes fit in this particular basket, so he has his own). She takes out all of her shoes and tries to put them on herself. Recently, she also has fun finding pairs and matching them together. Who needs the game Memory? We match shoes in this house.

But she doesn’t discriminate, his basket of shoes is equally as interesting as ours! She can even climb into his basket.

Then, every morning when we’re upstairs getting dressed – not just SOME mornings, this is EVERY morning – she opens my closet where I keep the majority of my shoes on the floor and goes to town trying them on, picking them up, sorting them…

She has a particular love of these oxfords. I think they’re snazzy, but I think when the day comes that she wears a size 7 1/2 women’s shoe, they will become hers because she loves them so much.

And recently, she discovered that I keep some old, lesser worn shoes in a Tupperware container under the bed. Now, every few mornings she remembers this bin and reaches to get it out…

So I usually drag it out for her, open it up, and let her go to town playing, trying them on, organizing them in pairs.

But how does she already have such a love of shoes at 20 months old?

According to Christian Louboutin, when a woman tries on a pair of shoes, she doesn’t just look at the shoe and like/dislike them, she looks at her entire self in the mirror and sees if she likes “how” they make her look. He says “shoes are a pedestal.” Is my Z doing this? No, she’s too little to even know about image and how something looks. She has pure, naive tastes of what she likes and dislikes and therefore, I think I have pretty strong evidence here that a love of shoes is something you’re born with. Sure, she’s observed me prancing around in some pretty great shoes, but her love goes above and beyond just trying to be like mommy.