Imelda Marcos Does Her Bit for Shoe Business

Feb. 22 -- After all these years, Imelda Marcos has finally put her shoes where her mouth has been.

For years, the world's most public and uninhibited possessor of footwear has maintained that her prodigious shoe collection was merely her way of supporting the shoe industry in the Philippines city of Marikina.

With over 40 percent of its residents employed in the shoe industry, Marikina, situated near the capital of Manila, is popularly called the shoe capital of the Philippines.

Last Friday, the former Philippine First Lady actually did her bit for the Marikina shoe industry when she inaugurated the country's first shoe museum.

Wearing a pair of locally made silver shoes, Mrs. Marcos succeeded in drawing world attention to the Shoe Museum and with it, provided the plug she always said she was giving to the Filipino shoe industry.

Housed in a small, two-story building, the Shoe Museum displays more than 200 pairs from Marcos' vast personal collection, which includes lush pumps, little strappy numbers and soft moccasins, all in Mrs. Marcos' size 8 1/2.

Footwear From the Past

But though the display featured wares from top fashion houses such as Christian Dior, Givenchy and Chanel, it was nowhere near the sight that confronted Filipino officers in 1986 after the Philippines' first couple fled the Malacañang presidential palace following a popular revolt.

In the basement of the palace, officials found a collection of 1,200 shoes of seemingly every conceivable color and cut in a uniform size 8 1/2 neatly lined up.

The array of footwear, critics claimed, was the epitome of the excesses of the Marcos regime in a country then struggling with abject poverty.

But Marcos, a woman known for a temperament matched only by her extravagance, has proved she possesses the sort of political soles that enable her to bounce right back into public life.

While her husband died in exile after his 1986 fall from grace, Mrs. Marcos has made several, often theatrical, attempts at jumping into Filipino political life including standing for presidential elections in 1992 and 1998.