In recent months I have got really into zebra print. It was researching the legendary 20th Century Manhattan nightclub El Morocco on East 54th Street and discovering its zebra print banquettes and interior that must have done it.
I own a very nice zebra print bikini. And I have zebra print sandals too, but they are very flat. They don't quite satisfy this girl's love of the high heel.
So how amazing that in the midst of this new fascination, I discover that Mr Blahnik has obliged with a very high zebra print version of his celebrated 'Sedarby' style and they are featured on the feet of Sarah Jessica Parker in the new Sex & The City movie. This means I am going to have to see the movie once for the plot, and once for the shoes! And when I do see those zebra print beauties strutting down the streets of New York I will be so excited. It will be the perfect cocktail of pleasure and pain. Pleasure at their mere existence, and pain that I cannot afford to own a pair!
Oh there will be High St and E-bay knock offs going left right and centre. But I don't want cheap copies. I want the real thing. And if I can't have that I'd prefer to have nothing and dream…
El Morocco, incidentally, saw its finest hours in the 1930s and 50s, famously banning Humphrey Bogart for life, and being the first club to use a velvet rope at the door. It stayed open on and off, in less glamorous forms and under different names, until the late 1990s. It was finally demolished in 2004 and luxury penthouse apartments have now been built on the site.
So I created my own. And the moral of the story is, our dreams are free and there are no limits. Defunct nightclubs can magically re-open, Carrie really can make a go of it with Big, and shoes can be as high and expensive as Mr Blahnik can magic up.
Ps.
If you see a petite woman with stripey hair and a dreamy look in her eye sleepwalking through the city in high heels, it's probably me. Lost in my own world, I am in search of my El Morocco, on perfectly high zebra striped Manolo's.