Left Behinds

The anti-andrewsullivan.com. Or, the Robin Hood (Maid Marian?) of bright pink Blogger blogs.

Monday, September 25, 2006

The Stiletto Bandit

There's a silly but very funny story in this week's New Yorker about "the stiletto bandit, a thief who has eluded N.Y.P.D. detectives since burgling the garment-district showroom of the French cobbler Christian Louboutin."


“He kicked through the wall,” Shawna Rose, Louboutin’s public-relations director, said the other day, pointing to a large, jagged crater just to the left of the office’s front door. “When I got off the elevator, I saw piles and piles of drywall and fibreglass. The door was wide open. My first thought, even though it wasn’t logical, was water damage.” The date was June 26th, a Monday morning. Rose went through the door, only to come upon a scene out of an especially hellacious sample sale. Shoeboxes and lids askew. Tissue paper everywhere. Lefts without rights strewn across the room, their trademark scarlet soles upturned like pools of blood in a Brian De Palma movie.
Did you catch that? Dude kicked through drywall to get his greedy, fashionable hands on their Spring line of unwearably avant-garde footwear.

Throughout the piece, the staff have an amusing admiration for the thief's aesthetic sensibility. "The robber, Rose realized, had selected his quarry with a finicky precision equally reminiscent of the Zodiac Killer and Diana Vreeland."

My friend and I were speculating about who the bandit might be. I was imagining a Leigh Bowery drag queen sidekicking through the drywall in a fit of retail-therapy hysteria (a high-fashion Robin Hood in Maid Marian's chunky flats?).

"God no," she retorted without pause. "It can't be someone trashy. It has to be someone with exquisite taste. And size 38 feet. Although no woman I know with 38 feet could kick through cardboard, much less a wall. So a large man with a passion for small, fashion-forward women. Andre Leon Talley on a bender, say, or Hamish Bowles coked out of his mind finding it hilarious to steal a bunch of vintage wedges for his private collection."

Bandit?

Or hero?

3 Comments:

  • At 1:27 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    You know what they say. Femme in the streets, butch in the ... after hours shoe boutiques?

     
  • At 1:37 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    A European 38 – for those of you who do not shop at Blahnik or Prada – is equivalent to an American 8. My eleven-year old cousin wears a size 10.
    Because of the freakishly feminine shoe size, I had to compose a list of potential double X suspects.
    Paris Hilton is out even though she would be someone who would “get” the patent black and white stripes on the Louboutin mule that was snatched. Paris wears a size eleven. Isabella Rossellini wears a size 9, as do models like Shalom Harlow. In the travesty movie “In her Shoes” both Cameron Diaz and Toni Colette purport to be an 8 ½. Personally, I doubt that those two women (unconvincing sisters on screen) could exchange shoes, let alone share that size.
    I firmly believe Andre Leon Talley -- who is a giant -- does not wear a woman’s 8. On the other hand, Hamish Bowles – who is petite -- very well might.
    Solomon, I give you your culprit.

     
  • At 3:55 PM, Blogger Solomon Grundy said…

    Heh, good detective work, gumshoe.

    I'd like to see Hamish Warrior Princess sidekicking his way through a plaster wall.

    Also, what's up with Louboutin not having surveillance cameras? Or did Hamish cover those with his shimmery scarf?

     

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