Put yourself in the shoes of Imelda Marcos. At the height of your power you are the wife of a president, one of the 10 richest women in the world, intimate with the world’s dictators and the owner of arguably the biggest private collection of art — and footwear — on the planet.
Then try to squeeze into those sling-backs again today. You are a widow, suspected by millions of murder, accused of one of the greatest thefts in history and ridiculed across the globe as a by-word for extravagance and bad taste. Many of your shoes have been confiscated. And as if that is not enough, you have gained as many extra kilos as years.
You would expect her to feel a little sorry for herself and a mite detached from humdrum reality, to propagate conspiracy theories about how it all went wrong and turn to supernatural explanations. But you wouldn’t expect her to reinvent herself as a green activist by launching a line of recycled fashion accessories.
The wife of the former dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, now considers herself an evangelist for beauty and environmental awareness. “I want this Imelda collection to symbolise a spirit to recycle all garbage into jewellery to bring about paradise again. It is not about money,” she says. “It is evangelisation. We must save the world.”
It is that most postmodern of devices, self-parody. Marcos has been warned that the world will mock her, and is using this knowledge to her advantage, putting shoe designs on her handbags. “It was my grandson’s idea,” she says. “He said they will laugh at me and say here is Imelda again.”
When asked about the thousands of shoes that were famously discovered in the presidential palace after the Marcoses fled, her answer is more well-worn than the green shoes she is wearing for our interview. “In my closet, they found shoes not skeletons. Only things of beauty.”
It might be true that they found 3 000 pairs — “I was promoting the Philippine shoe industry” — but she is far more defensive about her sense of taste and blames her husband’s successor for the story that she danced in shoes that lit up as she moved.
Marcos is often batty, occasionally inspiring and disarmingly charming. She clearly lives in a dreamworld. She claims to be a penniless widow, while clicking a button for servants in a Manila penthouse cluttered with masterpieces by Picasso, Michelangelo, Gaugin, priceless antique statues of Buddha and gold, gold, gold.
In many ways, the guffaws about bad taste have proved a blessing for Marcos, turning her into a figure of fun and distracting attention from allegations against her and her husband that include theft, the torture and imprisonment of opponents and the 1983 assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino.
Her new business venture sums up her approach to the rumours that have engulfed much of her life. The products, like the scandals, are not designed to last. “They are guaranteed to tarnish and disintegrate,” she laughs. “But they are Imeldific – filled with the spirit of trying to find beauty everywhere.” — Â