"A woman with good shoes is never ugly..."

Anyone who loved Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes as a child - and I did, like every other aspiring 10-year-old ballerina - will understand the continuing appeal of wearing ballet pumps in adulthood. Hence my attachment to a pair by Chanel (two-tone, beige with a black toe), which never fail to lighten my spirits when I wear them, even if they don't lighten my step sufficiently to perform arabesques along the streets of north London.

It seems fitting, therefore, that Coco Chanel herself referred to her favourite two-tone pumps as souliers - and although this means simply 'shoes', my own more romantic interpretation is that she understood that our souls might find a home in our soles (an idea Hans Christian Andersen, the son of a shoemaker, had no problem in expressing in his fairytales).
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