Change your shoes, change your future

Shoe preference says a lot about a woman. It may even be the key to her realizing future goals and aspirations.

By Melanie Herschorn
The L.A. Pilot

Watch shoe expert Meghan Cleary dish about the link between women's choices of footwear and their emotions. Video: Melanie Herschorn
Stay back: A ruby high-heeled slipper with spikes may reveal an innocent girl hiding behind a tough exterior. Photo: Nicola Brown, msdemmie.wordpress.com

A woman’s choice of footwear dictates her mood, says shoe expert Meghan Cleary, author of The Perfect Fit: What your shoes say about you.

“When I was doing research for my book, I sort of came in with a thesis,” said Cleary, who went to shoemaking classes, interviewed shoe designers and held focus groups to prepare.

What she found did not surprise her. “The more that I dove into the idea, the more it was actually true that when women are wearing a certain kind of shoe, they display certain characteristics,” she says.

Cleary, who confesses to being shoe-obsessed since age 5, believes that a woman’s choice of shoe reveals a lot about her.

“Based on what shoe [she’s] wearing in the moment, you can tell a woman's state of mind, and which career she's in.”

In her shoe guide, Cleary asks women to find their shoe preference in a list. They can then determine their “Shoe Sun Sign” – who they are – and their “Shoe Rising Sign” – who they have the potential to be.

Once her shoe profile is pinpointed, a woman can also read her shoe horoscope to learn how to complete her look, what career she is destined for, and who her perfect match, or “sole” mate, might be.

Shoes improve lives

But Cleary goes a step further in her Manolo Blahniks. She says that shoes actually have the power to improve women’s lives.

“I really think that women attribute that sense of transformation to shoes more than anything else,” she explains. “Because shoes change the way you actually inhabit the world – spatially, physically, physiologically - I think that they can change how you feel in the moment and really transform parts of your life.”

Cleary practices what she preaches. Her sole choice of footwear for business meetings is stilettos because she feels that high heels give her power.

“Stilettos are really the most feminine shoe. They really force you to tower...Immediately, you are the center of attention.”

She even admits to putting on a pair of stilettos when she takes conference calls from the privacy of her own home.

So can Cleary’s success as a shoe pundit be attributed to her $900 Jimmy Choos?

“I think I got lucky that my book came out on the tails of the ending of 'Sex and the City', at this time where shoes are really on the radar of every woman out there,” she says.

This New York City-based shoe lover found her calling in footwear. “I just followed my passion for shoes,” she says with a laugh.