THE PRINCE OF PUMPS
Why does a woman tuck her hair behind her ear, cock her head sideways and smile flirtatiously for the mirror when she’s trying on shoes? Do shoes look different when she smiles? For that matter, why do women need to look in mirrors when they’re trying on shoes? When you think about it, can’t they see them just fine by looking straight down at their feet?
I have just seen an example of this sort of mirror posing in the women’s shoe department at Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills. It is just one of many mysteries surrounding women and shoes, and I am hoping that Lonnie Bishop can provide perspective. He doesn’t even stop to think about it. “It’s because they like to see the shoes in the context,” he says. “It’s not just about how the shoes look by themselves. They complete the picture.”
To say that Bishop is a shoe salesman does not quite paint the picture. He has shod women for audiences with the president and meetings with Prince Charles. His cell phone number is on many a woman’s memory dial. Movie stars’ personal assistants call him frantically from film locations, pleading that he locate a certain pair of Guccis for the next night’s premiere.
Many of his regular customers stop by the store just to say hello. If getting hugs is good for your serotonin levels, Bishop will never need Prozac.
Needless to say, Bishop is selling more than footwear, and he knows it. “People come to you to fulfill their fantasy,” he says. “It’s ‘I want to look spectacular tonight, and can you help me?’ So you work out the shoes, you help them find a great handbag, then you go over to the Chanel counter and get an amazing nail color for their toes. You kind of feel like you’re assembling this beautiful thing for that evening.”
Bishop’s status among jet-setting shoe mavens across the country and around the world hovers somewhere between celebrity and legend. This can be hard to wrap your brain around if you think of shoe salesmen in terms of Al Bundy, the seedy protagonist in television’s “Married With Children.” But Bishop isn’t Al Bundy any more than Neiman Marcus--where women can spend the equivalent of the per capita income of a developing nation on a single pair of designer shoes--is a discount store.
Neiman’s typically stocks as many as 24,000 pairs of premier brands that cost between $250 and $3,500. It’s also the West Coast flagship for Manolo Blahnik, the designer who visits once or twice a year and seeds the showroom with rarefied footwear that inspires serious shoppers to hop a plane from the East Coast for a look-see.
Bishop has an almost preternatural ability to recall the stylistic preferences of about 300 women, and as boxes of the season’s new looks arrive, to deploy them to the homes and hotel rooms of his clients. (The store offers fast delivery and a liberal return policy, so try-ons are encouraged.) It’s a rare event that his selections are ever rejected, and his clients attest to his unerring instinct.
“I can always rely on his taste,” says Csilla Somogyi, who estimates her shoe collection at more than 500 pairs. (She IDs them by affixing color photos to each shoe box.) “If something comes in and he calls me, it’s always exactly what I want. He repeats himself a little bit, but there are always variations that make it more interesting.”
“You notice immediately that Lonnie has his own very personal sense of style, and that gives you confidence,” says April Gore, a stock investor, as she tries on a pair of crocodile Manolo Blahnik pumps and checks up on her special order placed with Blahnik’s factory in Italy. “But he also understands others’ personal style. He’ll remember that you don’t want stilettos, or if you’re partial to certain colors. He’s got a rare kind of personality. You never feel pressured.”
Then there’s Bishop’s unflagging persistence in scouring Neiman Marcuses the world over for the new Sergio Rossi cranberry suede sandals with diamond buckle or Manolo Blahnik crocodile pumps in that very popular size 8.
“Sometimes a shoe gets such tremendous press, it becomes the Holy Grail,” Bishop says. “Or sometimes a customer will bring in a magazine with a picture of an unidentified shoe, and it turns into detective work. So I’ll call up the advertising agency to find out who made the shoe. Or, I’ll contact the stylist who was on the shoot. Sometimes it works out great, but a lot of times the customer is extremely disappointed because it turns out the shoe was never produced--it was just a sample.”
All of this, combined with a certain intangible quality of “Lonniness” that women clearly find endearing, if not irresistible, has inspired a devoted following--some call themselves “Lonnie’s girls.” They know each other by the shoes they wear, which hopefully are not the same style and color, because the whole point of designer shoes is individuality. (Part of what makes them so expensive is that they’re produced in small lots, to reduce the possibility of duplication.) This, when you think about it, is another gender curiosity: running into someone with the same shoes is something that mortifies women but which for men can be a bonding experience.
While most guys don’t begin to get the woman-shoe thing, Bishop sees it this way: “It’s not as much about something you wear. It’s about something you own and possess, like jewelry. Was it Valentino who said, ‘I first look at a woman’s eyes, then I look at her feet’? I think that a properly adorned foot with a great, sexy shoe is just fantastic. It’s not a fetish, it’s just pretty and great to look at.”
Unsatisfied with this as a grand unifying theory of femininity, I call Jennifer Nicholson, a fashion designer (and daughter of Jack, it turns out) and one of “Lonnie’s Girls.” I ask if she can explain why a woman I know likes to take her new shoes out of the box and lay them on the passenger seat so that she can gaze upon them lovingly while driving home, as if they were, say, a newly adopted kitten.
Not only can Nicholson explain this, she can top it. “When I get them home, I have a chair that I display them on for a week in my dressing room,” she says. “It’s the New Shoe Spot. Because when I get dressed, a lot of the time I’m inspired by the shoe. They’re mood elevators. I think that they’re little art objects, and each one is like owning a piece of art that you get to walk around on. They can really change the way you’re feeling about yourself.”
Another thing I want explained is that, from my understanding, attracting men is not the reason women stockpile arsenals of pheromone-stimulating heels. Or so they say. “Women buy shoes to please themselves, not for the men,” Somogyi declares with conviction. It is a sentiment echoed by several other women.
I submit this observation to Judith Waters, a style management consultant and professor of psychology at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, N.J. Her reply is, “Ho, ho, ho.” For the record, her inflection evokes Santa Claus, as opposed to Lil’ Kim and hip-hop, although either reference is sort of apropos. “It all comes down to sex. Anybody who tells you that it’s something else is half asleep. It’s about how high heels make you look in terms of the shape of your leg and attracting men.”
Well, then.
*
YOU MIGHT BE TEMPTED to envision Bishop as a guy who has a long, sleek ponytail, wears a gold chain around his neck and calls everyone “baby.” Instead, here is a laid-back Southern California native of 37 with collar-length sandy blond hair who sings in a rock band and is getting married. I wonder if he met his fiancee in the store.
I have, in fact, begun constructing a rather elaborate fantasy about a Beverly Hills shoe salesman who operates along the lines of Warren Beatty in “Shampoo,” toting boxes of Pradas instead of scissors and blow dryers. Posed with this scenario, Bishop laughs and shakes his head. “Well, it’s not really like that,” he says, which may account for his unruffled eight-year tenure as one of the store’s 25 premier sales associates.
He is often invited to socialize with his clients. Sometimes he has dinner with them at restaurants, or he may stay for a glass of wine after dropping off packages at someone’s home. Many consider him family. When Bishop lost the silver Mont Blanc pen he hands to his customers to sign their receipts, two of his best clients individually bought him replacements. “There’s a level of mutual respect that makes it all really enjoyable,” he muses.
The most expensive pair of shoes Bishop has ever sold were $4,500 Manolo Blahnik crocodile boots. The most shoes he has sold at one time were 30 pairs, for a total of about $16,000. But what goes through his head when he stops to think, amid a sale, about the vast amount of money his customers spend on mere footwear?
“I just chuckle and enjoy it,” he says. “You sit with these women and you’re selling a $2,000 shoe, and your adrenaline starts to pump. It’s an investment of sorts that they’re going to wear to a very important event, and you want to be a part of making it happen. I never get tired of selling a beautiful Blahnik. It’s like selling a piece of art that’s going to go to somebody’s home. Basically, selling expensive shoes to women is a lot of gosh darn fun.”
A couple of days later, Bishop is helping a very blond, very toned woman as she peruses a “look book” of the coming season’s offerings, while her husband minds their infant twins. They have come down from San Francisco so that she can put dibs on her choices before they fall in the wrong hands.
“She talks about you all the time,” the husband tells him as his wife hugs Bishop. “Whenever she gets depressed, she says, ‘I need to go spend some time with Lonnie.’ ”
“Try to come down Sept. 22,” Bishop says. “He’ll be here, you know.”
“He’s a real person?” the square-jawed husband asks dubiously, causing his wife to roll her eyes. Not only is Manolo Blahnik a living, breathing person, Bishop patiently explains, but he’s also the designer of the shoes that women covet above all shoes.
The husband cocks his head and does a pretty good job of appearing interested. Still, you can tell he doesn’t quite understand how it is that the designing of shoes puts you on the pedestal just this side of Elvis, or causes people to inflect the third person singular pronoun--He--in reference to said Designer--with the sort of verbal uppercasing that televangelists reserve for The Lord.
After the couple leave, Bishop takes a seat in the showroom and looks at his watch. It is 2:30 p.m. on a Friday, and this, he says, is the lull before the storm. Friday afternoons are brisk. Shopping is the way shoe mavens wind down for the weekend--or gear up, depending on how you look at it.
There is just one more thing I want to ask him, something I’d heard somebody say a long time ago. Is it true, I ask, that women will buy shoes just to keep other women from getting them?
“Absolutely,” he says without hesitation. Then he adds, “In a way, it’s human nature because foot-wear is a very emotional thing. If a woman sees another woman interested in the same shoe, there’s a good chance she’s going to snap it up.”
