A shot of Armani

Some time back I was putting together a page in the magazine I worked on, and asked the fashion department to call in a pair of ponyskin leopard-print high-heeled mules by Emporio Armani. They were gorgeous shoes, and I tripped around the photostudio happily, amidst general ooh-ing and ah-ing, till, sadly, it was time for them to go home to Giorgio. Fast forward a couple of months. Sadia and I are in Berlin for the weekend, spending Saturday morning shopping in KaDeWe. I have told Sadia that I am on a shoe-diet and under no circumstances am I to be allowed to purchase. If I look like I might be about to buy shoes, she is to wrestle me to the ground and call security. After some hours in the luxury diamante hairgrip department (fact), we stray into 'Damen Schuhe' (Ladies' Shoes.) It looks totally unappealing – until, suddenly, I spot them. My Armani mules. Nestling on a sale table, between last season's Marc Jacobs bootees and a Birkenstock. Trembling, I pull them out. I ask the sales assistant if they have any in my size. They have. I try them on. 'Oh mercy!' gasps Sadia, totally abandoning her appointed role in the proceedings, 'they are FABULOUS!' It was meant to be. Later we took them to the Bettina Rheims exhibition in C/O, where I shot them looking dishevelled on the stairs.