Addicts pay top dollar to get shoe fix

Addiction is the overpowering physical or emotional urge to continue substance use despite adverse consequences. Shoe addiction is the overpowering urge to buy shoes regardless of the negative outcome.

By Melanie Herschorn
The L.A. Pilot

Which shoes to choose? Shoe addicts sometimes buy multiple pairs in the same color and style so they never run out of their favorite kind of footwear. Photo: Heart & Sole
This pair by Stuart Weitzman is covered with more than 500 diamonds, and valued at $2 million. Owning this creation is a shoe addict's dream. Photo: ruggedelegantliving.com

The first Shoe-aholics Anonymous meeting may have an untold number of women lining up to come in.

Although the shoe-aholics group has yet to form, each year more women across the United States may be in need of, ironically, a 12-step program to help them stop buying footwear.
 
“I would say that I have definitely spent quite a bit of money on shoes and it somehow brings me some pleasure as cocaine may bring some junkie…or alcohol to an alcoholic,” says Rebecca Lock, a self-professed shoe addict.

American women’s total footwear sales reached $20 billion in 2005, up 8 percent from 2004, according to The NPD Group consumer data.

Women are shelling out hundreds of dollars per pair of designer shoes. The more expensive designers, like Manolo Blahnik, sell some pairs for thousands of dollars each.

Cost is not a factor

But price isn’t necessarily a deterrent. Shoe lovers will sometimes pay top dollar to feel good.

“I can’t explain it, but when I’m having a bad day or when I’m down or even when I’m happy, going shopping and coming home with something that I love and that I’m excited to wear just lifts my spirits,” says Lock. “Putting on a pair of shoes makes me feel confident and sexy.”

Experts say that women enjoy buying footwear because shoes can be a status symbol, an instant pick-me-up and enable women to exert their femininity.

“I do think women buy shoes to feel better about themselves,” says Beth Whiffen, owner of Santa Monica-based shoe store, The Twefth Step. “I think they really can affect your mood and the way you feel about yourself.”

An admitted shoe addict, Whiffen has had classic symptoms of shoe addiction.

“I probably have spent almost an entire paycheck on shoes before,” she says. “When I wasn’t making a ton of money, once in a while I would buy a pair of shoes for $500.”

Whiffen realizes that the money should have gone towards rent or food, but she couldn’t resist. “Sometimes when you see this great pair of shoes and you just have to have them, it’s all you can think about. You have to indulge that."

Indulging can sometimes lead to excess, and some shoe addicts will spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on shoes that they do not need.

“I do not wear all the shoes I buy and actually, I have several hundreds of dollars worth of shoes that I have not yet worn and have not yet taken out of the box,” Lock says. “I buy them on a whim. You get caught up in it.”