Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 16, 1995 TAG: 9509180034
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: HALE SHEIKERZ STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Temple Kinsey, a not-so-old woman (she's 22) lives with shoes. Not just a few or even several. More like a few hundred.
Call it a hobby, an obsession, an addiction or just a phase.
But whatever you do, don't call Temple Kinsey the Imelda Marcos of Blacksburg.
"I don't want to take that away from the world," Kinsey says.
At last count, Kinsey owned about 350 pairs of shoes - and that was more than a year ago.
These are not just ordinary shoes you can purchase at the mall.
Kinsey's shoes are in a class of their own.
In the past several years, she's concentrated on expanding her collection of platform shoes. They are big, chunky and bulky, and in some cases uncomfortable.
Kinsey admits she's bought shoes just because of their neat style or price, but once she wore them for a few hours she found she had a hard time walking.
Her collection includes Doc Martens, Harley Davidson boots, Barbarella boots - the kind that zip up to the thighs - sandals, heels, spikes and slippers.
Kinsey also has about 50 pairs of tennis shoes - everything from Nike to Converse. Because her feet are a size 5B - which she says is relatively small and difficult to find - she has to special order her Nike tennis shoes from Nike Town in Chicago. Among her canvas collection are nine pairs of colorful Converse "Chucks," which she buys in kid sizes - they're cheaper.
She started her collection when she was about 5 years old and has kept most of the shoes she's bought.
She keeps 200 of her "more current" styles in her bedroom. These are the ones she "regularly" wears. The rest of her collection is stored in giant boxes in the basement. The oldest ones, from her childhood, are stored at her mother's house in Salem.
With footwear stacked on shelves against the wall and above her bed, Kinsey's pink-colored bedroom resembles a shoe store.
Her husband, Justin, says he brings his friends into the room and says "welcome to our shoe museum." He jokes about his wife's habit, though he admits she's a bit extravagant. At least he always knows what to buy her.
"I ask her every time she buys [a new pair] if she'll wear them," he says. He points to a pair of brown canvas boots and says "I think she's wore those only once."
When the couple married in June and Justin moved into Kinsey's two bed-room apartment, Temple had to store many of her the shoes to make room for his clothes. He keeps his clothes and 10 pairs of shoes in the closet in the spare bedroom.
When the couple honeymooned at Virginia Beach, Temple bought between 10 to 15 pairs of shoes at one store. They were on sale, she says.
And that's how Kinsey gets most of her shoes - at 75 percent discount. She goes to Northern Virginia, Washington, Virginia Beach and New York City to find the look and style she wants on sale and at the end of the season. She also orders a lot of her shoes and visits thrift shops, where she says she gets the best deals on platforms.
She estimates her shoe budget to be around $150 a month, more if she makes a special shoe-shopping trip. Three years ago she spent $300 on a pair of Donna Karan shoes, which were on sale. The brown platforms now sit on a shelf; they're not that comfortable.
When Kinsey sees a pair of shoes she likes, she buys it, ignoring the price tag. However, she did once stop herself from buying a pair of $500 Chanel shoes.
When it comes to clothes, Kinsey starts with the kind of shoe she wants to wear then works up to the outfit. It all depends on her shoe mood. Her husband says sometimes she changes several times just to find the outfit that goes with the particular shoes she wants to wear.
Because she's petite - she's 5 feet 2 inches tall-2 - Kinsey chose a pair of black suede platforms to wear with her wedding gown to make her look taller. She did put white ice-skate covers over them. Her mother, however, had her wear a pair of $10 gold strap-heels from Payless when she took her wedding photos.
A clothing and textile major at Virginia Tech, Kinsey wants eventually to be a shoe designer. She wants to be an authority on shoes.
"I can talk about shoes all day," she says. In fact, she's considered starting a shoe club or writing a book about shoes - how people in different cities wear different styles.
Her fascination, as she calls it, has led her this semester to do an independent study on how shoe styles constantly change, yet go back to old styles as well.
She's also interested in the psychology of shoes.
What you wear on your feet can tell a lot about who you are, Kinsey says.
"It's all in the shoes."
by CNB