Imelda Marcos’s Beltrami Sandals
(1987-1992)
No exhibition about footwear could fail to mention Imelda Marcos, the widow of former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, who is a notorious shopaholic with a penchant for shoes. Born in 1929, over the course of her life she supposedly amassed a collection of some 3,000 pairs of shoes – including these sling-back high-heel sandals, decorated with black embroidery and rhinestones, which were made by the Italian designer Beltrami. Marcos signed the upper lining of each sandal in the pair, which now belongs to Toronto’s Bata Shoe Museum. Today Marcos embodies the obsession that shoes still engender in many people, including those passionate collectors who acquire footwear never to be worn, but only to be marvelled at.