A love of shoes is often characterised as a women’s thing, but is this true? There are enough trainer collecting blokes out there for it not to be the case. It’s just that men and women favour different types of shoe – for women it’s all about taste, glamour, beautiful lines – there are many shoes by the famous design houses (Laboutin, Jimmy Choo) that would probably look just as good in a glass museum case as on someoene’s foot. Women also want fun from footwear – a bit of colour, and an interesting design. Shoes with spirit. This YouTube clip sums up womens shoe design with clarity:

Bloke footwear is a different story – for an example of this think of the Oscars ceremony. The men’s shoes worn to the ceremony are standard formal black tie type shoes – you could wear the most expensive pair of formal shoes ever made, or something from the market in the Arndale Centre – and nobody would know, notice, or care. And that’s how it should be. Blokes blend in while women play a different role – giving colour, brightness and wamth to the occasion.

For male shoe enthusiasts it’s mainly all about trainers – there are bound to be some desi boot/ Docs/ Converse aficionadi out there but there’s nothing like a vintage basketball shoe site to get the pulse racing. Occasionally the Sunday papers will run a piece on a training shoe collecter – often a dude who works in the creative industries with the money, time and space to construct a kind of sneaker grotto in his house, a mad collection of trainers that can only be described as having a touch of the Imelda marcos about it. Me, I have two pairs of trainers and that’s it. If I had the money though I would definitely have three pairs though – why not, eh?

So what about you? How many pairs do you have? And what’s the least and most spent on a pair?