BooksBarbecue
Back The Shoe Queen
Chapters (67)
  1. Cover
  2. “And may I say, those shoes are adorable.”
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. ( I )
  7. ( one )
  8. ( two )
  9. ( three )
  10. ( four )
  11. ( five )
  12. ( six )
  13. ( seven )
  14. ( eight )
  15. ( nine )
  16. ( ten )
  17. ( II )
  18. ( eleven )
  19. ( twelve )
  20. ( thirteen )
  21. ( fourteen )
  22. ( fifteen )
  23. ( III )
  24. ( sixteen )
  25. ( seventeen )
  26. ( eighteen )
  27. ( nineteen )
  28. ( IV )
  29. ( twenty )
  30. ( twenty-one )
  31. ( twenty-two )
  32. ( twenty-three )
  33. ( twenty-four )
  34. ( V )
  35. ( twenty-five )
  36. ( twenty-six )
  37. ( twenty-seven )
  38. ( twenty-eight )
  39. ( twenty-nine )
  40. VI
  41. ( thirty )
  42. ( thirty-one )
  43. ( thirty-two )
  44. ( thirty-three )
  45. ( thirty-four )
  46. ( VII )
  47. ( thirty-five )
  48. ( thirty-six )
  49. ( thirty-seven )
  50. ( thirty-eight )
  51. ( thirty-nine )
  52. ( forty )
  53. ( forty-one )
  54. ( forty-two )
  55. ( VIII )
  56. ( forty-three )
  57. ( forty-four )
  58. ( forty-five )
  59. ( forty-six )
  60. ( forty-seven )
  61. ( forty-eight )
  62. ( forty-nine )
  63. ( fifty )
  64. ( fifty-one )
  65. Acknowledgments
  66. Acknowledgments
  67. Questions for Discussion

“Yes, I do.” Lulu reached for the sketch. “Say, that’s a great caricature. I didn’t know you could draw, chérie.”

“I can’t. Not really.”

Lulu mock-frowned. “Take it from me, you’re good. I might not know about poetry, but I do know about art. Do you know how many times I’ve been drawn?”

And now two women came into view, walking arm in arm down the street. Women dressed in black. The younger one had a horsey face with big dewy eyes. The older one had softer features, but her eyes were hard, steely. Determined.

Genevieve remembers an apartment lined with books. A table covered in papers—poems that could be salvaged or lost. Two women peering together at some difficult scrawl, trying to decipher it. A feeling of peace, of deep water. A desire to help them. To join them. And now an intricate squirling pattern in three shades of green starts growing and spreading across her imagination, the way ivy sprawls and climbs over buildings.

Acknowledgments

The Real-Life Shoemaker Behind The Shoe Queen

IN THE EARLY 1900S, shoe designer Pietro Yanturni had a shop just off the Place Vendôme bearing the legend Pietro Yanturni—World’s Most Expensive Shoes. Like Paolo Zachari, Yanturni made his hand-picked customers walk up and down barefoot so he could study their feet and the way they moved, and create shoes that would be absolutely perfect for them. The women had no say in how the shoes would look, what materials would be used or when the shoes would be ready. Some customers would be kept waiting for years.

Many women, once they’d worn Yanturni’s shoes, became addicted and refused to buy from anyone else. Rita de Acosta Lydig, a wealthy society woman and patron of the arts, famously bought hundreds of pairs from Yanturni, kept them in velvet-lined boxes and had special shoehorns made from the wood of antique violins.

Yanturni is something of a mystery. He was a curator of the Cluny Museum in Paris, but little else is known about his life. Sources can’t agree on the spelling of his name (he’s often called Yantourney or Yanturney), where he was from or pretty much anything else. The shoes, however, have survived, and Yanturni has been a major influence on shoe design, then and since, particularly in his creative, varied use of fabrics and color.

The Crazy Years

IN READING ABOUT PARIS in the 1920s, I encountered many irresistible stories and personalities. While no character in my novel is based entirely on a real figure, I should mention the following: