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The Patron Lady of Shoes

Wednesday August 31, 2005 

Imelda Marcos

Once known as the ‘Steel Butterfly’, Imelda Marcos was the beautiful wife and confidante of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Ferdinand Marcos probably first noticed her when Imelda was voted Miss Manila in the early 1950s, and it was the beginning of a long and infamous marriage. The Marcos regime (1965-86) was marked by corruption, political repression and gross financial shenanigans, acts to which Imelda was almost certainly privy. The Marcoses were finally deposed in 1986 and fled to Hawaii, where Ferdinand died in 1989.

The fun started when the palace where the Marcoses lived was raided after the couple fled in 1986. Amidst Imelda’s rich dresses and hats and furniture and fine crystal was an enormous closet full of exquisite designer high-heeled shoes - 3000 pairs of them!

And what did Mrs. Marcos have to say to that? “I did not have three thousand pairs of shoes, I had one thousand and sixty.” (1987)

Imelda Marcos later returned to the Philippines and, in spite of everything, was elected a legislative representative from her native district of Leyte. In October of 2001 she was arrested and formally charged with corruption and amassing a fortune of up to five billion dollars illegally during her husband’s regime.

But nobody really thinks she is at all shattered by the charges or even her eventual conviction. After all, she is the woman who once said: “Win or lose, we go shopping after the election.”

Filed Under High Heels

Comments

One Response to “The Patron Lady of Shoes”

  1. Wileen Olasiman on December 16th, 2006 4:26 am

    Imelda didn’t even buy most of her shoes. Most of them were given to her by companies for advertisement purposes.

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