A ring holder, foot file, snow shaker, door stop, cookie cutter, lipstick caddy, cake server and a hammer, plus porcelain pieces, Christmas ornaments and party favors, they’re all shaped like a shoe.
These heels aren’t made for walking. That’s just not what they do.
To her customers’ delight, Connie Hansel keeps a collection of more than 100 miniature shoes at her consignment store, Classique Closet. She has a long-held fascination for fashion that extends to the feet.
“It’s all about the shoes,” she said. “My sisters, family, friends, they keep adding to this collection.”
It began when Hansel was a girl.
She pointed to a pretty pink porcelain shoe embellished with flowers and a gold trim in the lighted display case behind the sales counter. The glazed slipper once sat on her dresser. She decorated with shoes and still does at her boutique.
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She’s created window displays out of unwanted shoes, transforming them into hanging decorations with gold spray paint and fishing line. She has heels painted on the wall and propped up on shelves and pedestals.
She has a 365-day shoe calendar and a porcelain pair hanging in the bathroom. The heels act as hooks.
And she has big plans for a big shoe. A 3-foot-tall plush, zebra-striped shoe chair will be mounted on the freshly painted wall at the front of the clothing store.
If the shoe fits, mount it.
It’s shoe madness, and it runs in the family.
One of Hansel’s sisters recently reminded her of a pair of clear, Cinderella slippers that they fought over as little girls playing dress-up.
Hansel, wearing dangling silver shoe earrings, confessed she’s been looking for the long-lost slippers while cleaning out her parents’ house. They’re nowhere in sight, and she’s wondering if someone beat her to the punch.
She attributes part of her shoe obsession to watching her mom get dressed to the nines for a dance club. She couldn’t recall what kind of dancing it was, but she remembers her mother looking so beautiful in her high-heel shoes.
Hansel missed out on time getting to sport fashionable footwear.
She worked in a packing warehouse and had to wear work boots.
“I didn’t get to wear dressy shoes – all the more reason to increase your collection,” she said. “You could look at the pretty things at home. You couldn’t wear them, but you could look at them.”
She decided to pursue a college degree as a nontraditional student and studied business with thoughts of becoming a financial analyst. She fell in love with consignment stores instead.
Even now, after 10 years of working in fashion, Hansel’s shoe closet at home doesn’t match the size of the miniature collection at her store.
Mary Jo Salem, a sales associate, called it a “little diva village.”
“Some customers have added to these since we’ve been here,” Salem said, giving a nod to the glittering display case.
Still, some shoppers try to get Hansel to part ways with her shoes. They’ll ask if the prized pieces are for sale and point out the one they want. Any in the glass cabinet, she won’t sell.
Nearly all of them were gifts. Each shoe has a story.
One of the latest added to her collection is a hanging ornament with a special message: “Today calls for big girl shoes.”
“There isn’t a celebration that goes by that I don’t get a shoe of some sort,” she said.
