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ME AND MY MANOLOS

Proper stilettos have been out of fashion for a decade. Instead, high heels have been as pumped up as an SUV or a pair of Botoxed lips, with platform soles, rounded toes and misshapen, coned heels. The kind of shoes you can do almost anything in--except walk.

But shoes are at, if you'll forgive me, a turning point. The signifier is Nicolas Ghesquière at Balenciaga: where he goes, the rest of the high street follows. For summer Ghesquière had some daft women (not me, no thank you) staggering about in seven-inch "Gladiator" platform shoes. But this winter the Balenciaga woman will stalk instead, balanced on super-pointy metal-toed spikes, reminders that stiletto was originally the name of a dagger used by assassins to pierce the heart through chain mail. What was once a killer is now a benign weapon, used to attract.

I have never wavered from a lifetime's dedication to the stiletto, and one kind in particular. Once a year my husband buys a case of fine, château-bottled wine which he leaves in a dark, dank cellar. He tells me he has great pleasure in merely looking at these bottles. I too have a hobby. I lay down at least one pair of Manolo Blahnik stilettos every year. Unlike my husband, who can drink from each vintage only 12 times, I have dozens of opportunities to wear my Manolos.

For the first week or so I keep them where I can see them; so they sit out of their box, hooked over the end of our brass bed. Thereafter they join their older sisters in my wardrobe. Like Sleeping Beauty, some may not get an outing from one season to the next; but when they do they always register ten on the Gosh Meter.

There is nothing sensible about a pair of Manolos, except their craftsmanship. Neither can I behave sensibly in their presence. Not long ago I went into the Manolo shop in London where, out of a tissue-lined box, slid temptation. From one angle shimmering like an iridescent kingfisher's wing, from another like the opalescent green of a mallard's neck, they were a pair of velvet stilettos beyond the fantasy of an Ottoman empress. Embroidered with Persian tulips in gold military thread, their heels descended in a gentle serpentine curve redolent of Mae West's lips. On enquiring their price, my knees gave way. (Stop. Draw breath. Be sensible. When will you wear them?) Then I heard an involuntary voice--it may have been the devil, but I like to think it was my soul--saying: "I'll take them. No, I'll wear them, thanks."

Women love high heels because they never fail us. Whereas clothes from past seasons can hang heavy in our wardrobes, not so a pair of heels. When I kneel down and open up a shoebox, it is like blissfully reopening a present. While I enjoy my husband's intake of breath when I come down the stairs in a pair of heels, I tell myself I do not wear Manolos because they arch my back, exalt my breasts and bottom, or tilt my chin. I wear them because they are pure escapism. But then, who am I kidding?

I ring Barbara Hulanicki, the founder of Biba and a woman whose designs were instrumental in the sexual revolution of the 1960s, to ask her what she thinks of stilettos. "Slut!" she fires back instantly. "At Biba, all the most popular heels were five inches, which is stripper height," she laughs. "I used to go on Greek Street recces and look at the platforms and stilettos, which no nice girls wore. Then I built a slut factor into our shoes, which so went with the times. We did stilettos in metallic leathers and suede leopardskin, which sold in spectacular quantities. But we could never get our heels to be as elegant as Manolo's--although interestingly, he used to come into Biba and hang out before he did shoes."

The difference between Barbara's shoes and Blahnik's is partly one of technology--post-Biba, shoes could have the heel and sole moulded in one piece which allowed them to be finer and stronger. But Manolo also understands the placement of the heel and the angle of the instep, which should follow the line of your foot. A Manolo shoe holds your foot in place, and does not let it slip forward, forcing weight onto the ball of your foot. His shoes allow you to place some weight back on your heel--thereby avoiding what is known in the trade as the "stiletto strut", where a woman's hips are in a different time zone from her legs. It's said that almost 60% of GPs have treated an ankle or foot injury caused by high heels. I bet none of their patients wore Manolos.

A last thought. These days, a pair of vintage Biba shoes would be likely to cost more than my husband's 1960 Bordeaux--which has probably turned to vinegar by now.

Illustration: Barbara Hulanicki; photograph: Sam Barker

(Catherine St Germans founded the Port Eliot Lit Fest. A former style director of the Telegraph Magazine, she also writes for Vogue.)