Teetering on the brink

There is a theory that hemlines rise during economic booms and fall during recessions. Not this time. When things around us seem so drab, the last thing any woman wants is to wear clothes and shoes that reflect the drabness. Look at any fashion page or any group of women setting off for a night out and you'll see what I mean.

At parties, I exchange knowing glances with other women whose way of sticking two fingers up at the financial crisis is to step into the most glamorous shoes they possess. If the early-evening news is full of doom and gloom, I find the urge to dress up is totally irresistible. I choose my shoes before anything else, and I'm so attached to heels this winter that going out involves hours of planning.

Even so, disaster sometimes looms, such as the evening last week when I changed into heels in the back of a taxi, congratulating myself on my foresight. Then the driver dropped me off at the gate of the Imperial War Museum and I stared with dismay at the long path to the front door - long to someone in grey suede platforms with four-inch heels, that is. I tottered, recovered and tried to smile in a carefree way at a watching security guard.

Another evening last week, watching Nancy Dell'Olio on stage at the Bad Sex Awards, I couldn't help wondering if she'd turned up in her Christian Louboutins or changed into them at the door. When men laugh and ask women how they manage to walk in those heels, they don't realise they've hit on a secret known to every woman who cares about fashion.

Shoes with thin straps, narrow heels and bits of trailing jewellery aren't meant to be walked in. They're works of art, and just like any other work of art, they're meant to be stationary. You wouldn't trot after a bus in a Picasso, would you?

I once slipped and almost fell into the Grand Canal as I left the Danieli in gold mules, in a blizzard. Fortunately I had a male arm to hang on to, and the shoes looked fabulous when we arrived for cocktails in a nearby palazzo.

That was in the good old days, before impossibly high shoes became a shout of defiance against a torrent of never-ending bad news. As the recession drags on, killer heels have never been more necessary, even if what they're killing is my feet.