The House of Gail

Long ago and far away in Brooklyn, NY, 1954, Doc Ingis, my fiancé’s father, said, “Go buy yourself a beautiful pair of shoes, I’ll treat.” Oh boy, a fairy tale offering. He gave me fifteen dollars. I was rich and a silly young thing then, in love and engaged to be married. I took my fiancé’s hand and asked him to come shopping with me. I told him that there was a shoe store on 86th Street that would have the perfect pair of shoes. In fact, I had seen them in the window of A.S. Beck shoes. The shopping was close to his house in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn. What a great opportunity, treated to my first pair of high heels. So exotic, the three inch kind, pink, backless, with two straps holding them onto my feet. I loved those shoes. I put them on and pranced back and forth in the store to show them off for my fiancé. He loved them too.  “There’s something about those shoes,” he said. They were sort of like these in the picture, only with two thin straps.

1950’s vintage heels

I felt like a peacock showing off his feathers. When we got back, Doc Ingis asked, “How much did they cost?” “Fifteen dollars,” I said proudly, thinking I had made a wise decision. WHAT? . . . “You paid fifteen dollars for two straps, why? How could you make sense of that?” Naturally, the tears rolled down my cheeks. Although, I did keep them, I did. But I never forgot his reaction and his words from this usually kind and generous man. I’m sure that experience influenced my shoe shopping habit today. I love my shoes, no matter the cost.

I have two weddings coming up for grandsons’ and their ladies. Excuse to buy new shoes! The first wedding is on top of a mountain, we get there by cable car, and that’s where the ceremony takes place. Then later in the Ingis backyard, all set up for a wedding celebration. Buying these shoes had almost a near-supernatural effect, like updating a fab fashion outfit from last year.

Wedding 1 Non-traditional on the mountain and in the backyard. I’m wearing black silk culottes and a white silk sheer blouse.

Science has an answer to that supernatural effect: Turns out, we’ve always been wired for shoe lust, even when the going gets tough. I had to have these, I immediately got taller and thinner, and can almost look into Tom’s eyes, rather than looking up. Well, almost. However, although I’m practicing, I may still need to hold his arm to walk in these stilts.

Wedding 2 Traditional in a hall and wearing a gown.

Here’s some facts about Apparel and shoes:
First of all, there’s some serious mood-boosting going on when you try on any kind of apparel. “The neurotransmitter dopamine is released, providing a feel-good high, similar to taking a drug,” says Martin Lindstrom, a branding expert for Fortune 100 companies and author of Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy. “The dopamine increases until you swipe your debit card.” Usually, the high then flatlines, and guilt starts creeping in…except, that is, when the item you’re purchasing is a pair of shoes. Shoppers rationalize shoes as a practical buy — something they can wear multiple times a week — so they hold on to that pleasurable feeling longer,” says Lindstrom.

But it’s not just dopamine at work. Shoes’ mood-altering traits also come from another brain reaction, says Lindstrom. Buying new footwear stimulates an area of the brain’s prefrontal cortex termed the collecting spot. “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. Just think of how they’re often stored artfully on shoe trees and shelves. “They’re like sculptures,” says Ferriss. As a result, collecting each type provides a mini-adrenaline rush similar to the satisfaction a stamp collector gets when he acquires a rare find.

All those wonderful feelings are intensified when you choose high heels…but again, it’s biology, not Jimmy Choo, at work. “Like most animals, we’re wired to associate height with power,” says Helen Fisher, PhD, professor of anthropology at Rutgers University. “High heels can literally raise your status because you’re taller when you wear them.”

Heels carry historical significance as well, adding to their appeal. In previous centuries, only the wealthy wore high heels — everyone else had practical footwear to do manual labor. “Shoes were a measure of class,” says Fisher, “and we still have a bit of that mind-set ingrained in us.”

Now go even higher — to stilettos — and another element rears its head: sex. Stilettos are undoubtedly foxy, but why, exactly? “When a woman wears them, she assumes a primal mating pose called lordosis,” says Fisher. “Her butt lifts, and her back arches.”

But there’s more to it than how hot your bum looks. According to Daniel Amen, MD, author of The Brain in Love, our minds are structured in a way that may associate feet with sex. “The area of the brain that communicates with the genitals is right next to the area that deals with the feet,” says Dr. Amen. “These regions share neural crosstalk, which may be
why shoes can be erotic.” And we thought it was just our lust for high style.

Some of this info is from http://www.cosmopolitan.com/style-beauty/fashion/advice/a3331/women-love-shoes/

Did you know about the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto?

The Bata Shoe Museum is a footwear museum in downtown Toronto, Canada, located at Bloor St. and St George St. in the Bloor St. Culture Corridor. The museum collects, researches, preserves, and exhibits footwear from around the world.

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