When I was six years old, I won a drawing competition. The competition asked entrants to draw their favourite thing and to caption it with the reason why. I am fairly sure that my wonky rendition of high heels – closer in appearance to a pair of fairground slides – were not the cause of my winning; instead the caption “because you can see a lot when you wear them” must have been endearing enough (and all-too-literal) to snatch me the prize.
A few weeks ago I dug out a reproduction of my winning entry, and glanced at that familiar caption on the back. I come from a family who have never really worn heels – my hints and persuasions to my mum and even gran have always just been met with non-committal responses that flower into nothing – so to my later self my basis for such a specific “favourite thing” at such a young age seems strange and confusing. I have no memories of putting on a pair of heels and “seeing more”. It is easy to read new meanings into my earlier actions and thoughts. Did I mean that with heels on, more of the world would be open to me? Were heels a metaphor for power? I wonder at the difference the notion of those three-to-five inches of leather and plastic made on an impressionable mind. A mind that, 13 years later, still can’t shake off the excitement of new shoes.

Why shoes? What makes shoes – particularly heels – so special? The answer, or at least part of it, came to me as I listened to an interview with the CEO of Jimmy Choo. She spoke about loving shoes because no matter whether she is having a fat day or bad-hair day, her shoes always fit. It was a revelation to me: shoes always fit. Shoes always fit. I turned the phrase over and over in my head, and as I walked through the streets of Cambridge my eyes were glued to people’s shoes. Among the blur of black and comfort, my eyes sought out flashes of colour and the striking architecture of a well-formed heel. “Give a girl the right shoes,” said Marilyn Monroe, “and she can conquer the world”. And along the skyline of the greatest cities in the world, the spikes of the highest and best designed buildings are like the best heels: the Manolos, the Louboutins, the Empire State Building, the Shard. The world, and the world of shoes, became blurred into one idea of architectural success.

Though I’m not sure where my obsession with shoes started, TV icons are certainly to blame as the catalyst. Carrie Bradshaw may devote a certain proportion of her time to both sex and the city – but the most-talked-about character in the show is really her shoes. The show even turned Manolo Blahnik from an indie shoe designer into a household name. One episode will forever encapsulate my feelings: when you watch ‘A Woman’s Right to Shoes’, you’ll know what I mean. At Guy Bourdin’s Image Maker exhibition at Somerset House earlier this year, I was reminded of the bridge that heels make between seeing and feeling. They not only look beautiful completely alone, but enhance the wearer, and the wearer’s perception of herself. Victoria Beckham once said that she “couldn’t concentrate in flats”, which says more about heels than it does about flats. The level of concentration required when wearing heels – not to trip, or go over on your ankle – means that you hold yourself in a more assured and calm way than you would in any old pair of beaten-up trainers.

I bought my first two pairs of designer heels this summer, and they are the very best I could have imagined. The first – a pair of Rupert Sanderson’s – are made in an electric pink raw satin, and are cut in the most intricate way. The second – a pair by Camilla Elphick – are a deep cherry red patent leather sandal, with nude barely-there straps, and a royal flush of playing cards picked out in satin on the heel. Though many would say that shoes are a shallow investment, and money can be better spent elsewhere (which – don’t get me wrong – is certainly true), any connection I still have with my six-year-old self I am determined to cherish. And, while I don’t still think that I see much “more when I wear them”, I certainly feel a lot better.