When I was seventeen, I spent a summer in France with a French family as part of a Rotary exchange program for high school students. My parents sent me off for the summer with two well-packed suitcases, gifts for my host family, and $800 in spending money. Imagine their surprise when I returned home later that summer with the same two valises (French for suitcases, because by then I fancied myself fluent), about twenty bucks, and a brand spanking new pair of Prada pumps.
That’s right, Prada pumps.
Whereas other teenagers might have plunked down their spending money on the likes of trinkets, keepsakes, and other sorts of useless tourist mementos, I had more haute purchases in mind. After all, I reasoned, I was in the extremely rare situation of spending the summer in Mougins, a gorgeous Provençal village located just outside of celebrity-studded Cannes and, consequently, some of the best shopping in Europe.
Plus, I benefited from the similarly rare luck of having a tidy little sum to spend on pretty much whatever I wanted, with little parental discretion over the purchases possible—what with their being thousands of miles away and all. And surely, I concluded, my French host parents wouldn’t object to a girl taking a little la mode home with her to the States!
In short, I bought the shoes.
And what fabulous shoes they were! So fabulous, in fact, that I wore them until they literally fell apart, which happened sometime during my sophomore year in college. Clearly, even at the tender age of seventeen, I understood the power of a really great pair of shoes. You know what I mean—it’s that thing that a great pair of shoes or, for that matter, a great bag can do for your whole look. Get one right (great shoes or great bag) and you’re looking pretty good. Get both right and, well, odds are good you’re looking downright fabulous.
In fact, I have a theory about shoes and bags I like to call The Great Shoe-Bag Theory. It’s quite simple, actually: the best-looking (read: most well-put-together) women around are pretty much always carrying fabulous bags and shoes. The rest of the outfit? Well, it’s actually much less important.
