Staying one snazzy step ahead of the pack

Staying one snazzy step ahead of the pack

JAKARTA: Shoe manufacturers would stomp their feet in ire at the argument that shoes are simply footwear. And so would personality development gurus and executives who claim their expensive, shiny footwear puts them one step ahead of the competition.

There is no turning back -- shoes have staked their place as coveted status symbols among Indonesia's affluent.

Indonesian public figures take pride in their extensive brandname shoe collections.

Fashion designer Adjie Notonegoro has a collection of over 100 pairs of branded shoes. Indira Soediro, Miss Indonesia 1993, has 150 international brand shoes. H. Rahmat Shah, a businessman from Medan, and Dian Sitasari, a legal consultant at Lubis Ganie Surowidjojo, also keep large collections of shoes.

"I have four pairs for parties, Gucci and Etienne Aigner," said Dian. "For the office, I choose Ferragamo as I have 15 pairs of them." She keeps Prada shoes for other occasions.

Once simply functional, glimpsed briefly from under long pants and ankle-length skirts, shoes are now coming into their own as prized fashion and status statements. With prices running into the millions of rupiah, shoes are visible indicators of their wearer's spending power. Shoes, considered a sign of aristocracy during colonial times, have come full circle as the badge of Jakarta's moneyed elite today.

That's not all. There once was a time when a bit of spit and polish was enough to make shoes, and by association their wearer, look presentable. Today, spiffy, expensive footwear may put you on the road to success, but a scuffed pair will only lead to the back door in a job interview.

The minimal yardstick for shoes is that they should be dazzlingly shiny. Quality of material, model and the brandname will carry added value in perceptions of others, shoe advocates say. Many marketing professionals, whose workday is an endless round of meetings with suppliers and prospective buyers, pay persnickety attention to choosing the right shoes.

All style and no substance, the pragmatists may shout, but shoes are considered by some to be the gauge indicator of a person's inherent "value". "People can see who we are and respect us because of our shoes," said Auk Murat, a former model who now designs shoes.

"Clearly, people buy shoes for the sake of prestige," added Feiny Haripin, general manager of PT Yasalancar Mandiri, license holder for Versatile, Versace Classic V 2, Chloe and Lagerfeld brand shoes.

Feiny's reasoning is based on her own observations of buyers, as her shoes carry price tags above Rp 400,000 (US$163). "If someone is willing to buy pricey shoes, obviously this has little to do with the function of the shoes, but rather with prestige. To most people, it applies that if you buy expensive things, other people must be aware of this."

Biting irony

The growing demand for branded shoes and the increasing number of Indonesians endorsing shoes as a status symbol are inevitably connected to the booming economy of this country.

The hunger for foreign brands has lead to a sharp downturn in the domestic shoe business in the last three years. The biting irony is that Indonesians continue to be the stuff of shopping legends for their massive shopping sprees in Singapore, Hong Kong, Paris, London and Amsterdam.

"There was a sale during one of my trips to Milan, Italy," Feiny said. "I saw one floor full of Indonesians giving full rein to their shopping passion."

People still believe products sold abroad are of superior quality and more competitively priced than local products, she said. This is a misconception, she added, as foreign goods enter Indonesia at most one month after they go on sale abroad. Prices in Indonesia are between 10 and 15 percent higher because of taxes.

Only the very rich can afford to head for foreign lands when they need brandname shoes, but there are now more Indonesian consumers who can afford the shoes themselves. License holders are now bringing the shoes to them in Jakarta and other major cities.

"It is easy now to find branded items, not like back in 1987 when these items were available only at particular places such as Duta Merlin and Ratu Plaza," Feiny said. "Then people went to Singapore to buy branded items. The presence of so many plazas in Indonesia, such as Plaza Indonesia and Plaza Senayan, poses a big threat to Singapore."

Adjie Notonegoro believes more Indonesians buy brandname shoes than Europeans. This is not due to sheer numbers of Indonesia's population of 200 million, he argues. While Europeans buy shoes for practicality, both rich and middle-class Indonesians will fork out huge sums for brandname shoes.

People buy shoes during discount sales, pay credit or sometimes splurge only to resell the shoes later. "Who will ever find out?" Adjie said. "I know there are quite a lot of people here who are not well-off yet but force themselves to buy expensive shoes."

Regardless of pros and cons over brandname shoes as signs of the true status of their wearers, it is interesting to dig deeper into the habits of those with their very own shoe "fetish".

Rachmat Shah will travel abroad just to buy his favorite shoes and his name is on the list of patrons of a shoe boutique in Nevada. Indira Soediro bought 75 percent of her collection in New York, Paris, London and Milan. "I had no time to buy shoes here. It just so happened that I used to go abroad almost every month."

Adjie Notonegoro admitted that not all his shoes were bought abroad. "I usually visit Plaza Indonesia or Plaza Senayan to buy shoes," he said. "Abroad, I usually buy shoes in New York, London, Paris or Milan."

One of his favorites, Hermes, is not available here and he buys these shoes during international jaunts. His ardor for Gucci shoes is such that he once bought 50 pairs in one shopping spree. (JE/Dedeh/Thomas/Faras)

The above is an excerpt from Tiara lifestyle biweekly. The complete article with sidebars will appear in the magazine when it goes on sale Tuesday. It is printed here courtesy of Tiara.