112 I Can Read You Like a Book R
the roles shoes play in projecting intent. (Cathy Newman, National
Geographic, September 2006, pp. 74–93). Among the most salient
points are:
ƒ The blatant sexual body language that very high heels
force: breasts out, butt out, and the perception of a
longer leg.
ƒ Conveying wealth by having the soles of a shoe—or
in the case of the Sioux, a moccasin—dirt-free. The
Sioux used their clean, beaded moccasins as sign that
they could afford to ride horses rather than walk.
ƒ Expressing an attitude. Newman describes some of
the made-to-order shoes in Olga Berluti’s Warrior col-
lection, priced at $4,000 to $12,000 a pair, as “shoes
with the sleek, managing profile of a mako shark,
shoes decorated with piercings, tattoos, sometimes
scars...shoes for the hidden warrior inside every
man.”
ƒ Allowing the style to have a transformative effect.
This is the story of the woman who wears sensible
heels to office, and then comes home and replaces
them with stiletto-heeled, thigh-high boots.
You don’t even have to polish the soles of your shoes, as former
Vogue editor Diana Vreeland reportedly did, to be “well-heeled,”
which is a phrase that really means something in our culture. Some-
one with worn, unpolished shoes translates into “poor,” or at least
“careless,” throughout the country.
