I probably shouldn’t admit this as a fashion writer, but I don’t understand the big deal about shoes. I never have. I get the point of them–shoes serve an important function. When I was a wild haired, barefoot little naked boy at my family’s cottage (my parents nicknamed me Mowgli), I spent a couple summers not wearing shoes for weeks on end. I vividly remember the soles of my feet looking like ripped birch bark. We need to cover our feet. Women’s shoes can be pretty and high heels change the way you walk, but they’re the last item of apparel I notice on other people and I put about the same amount of attention into my own.

When former First Lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos fled her country she famously left behind almost 3,000 pairs of designer shoes. They swiftly became the preeminent symbol of corruption during her husband’s regime. In exile, she defended herself by claiming she was simply trying to bring beauty to her people. “In my closet they found shoes not skeletons,” she said. The succeeding government seized most of her possessions and, in a final bit of revenge, let the shoes grow mold in forgotten warehouses.

Imelda and I have different priorities. Here’s my second confession–I usually only have one pair of shoes at a time. Okay, maybe I’ll have one slightly dressier pair of shoes for job interviews or weddings (those occasions where you’re not supposed to wear jeans let alone sneakers). But I only have one pair of shoes I wear every day. I’ve done this since I was a child, when I wore the pair I got from annual pilgrimages to department stores for the whole year, or when my feet outgrew them. Because I don’t enjoy shoe shopping, I have even less reason acquired multiple pairs. They’re a functional, utilitarian thing for me, like socks. It’s not like I made style declarations with them, as I do with my underwear.

Because I wear only one pair at a time and I don’t treat them well, my sneakers wear down really fast. Since I take little to no pride in them, I only notice when they start falling apart. I know I’m pretty much alone in this. Whereas I kept the tradition of shoe monogamy since I was a kid, at some point everyone else began practicing shoe polyamory behind my back. Because they have multiple pairs, they last a whole lot longer before they turn crappy. I realize this is common sense, but it took me until the age of 28 to figure it out.

My friend Steven Dane worked in footwear for 5 years and has over 30 pairs of shoes. “About 8 are in my normal rotation,” he says. “If it’s a quality-made shoe, I find they can last 5-10 years, with the appropriate maintenance and a seasonal rotation (no soft-soled jazz shoes in the winter).”

Alli Sinclair, who also worked in shoe retail, at least made me feel like I wasn’t so unusual. “Men have around 10 pairs or less,” she told me. “Most men shoe shop once a year, rotating seasons. Women I would say twice a season, right at the beginning to see what’s new, then near the end for the clearance deals. Men usually buy because they want it to be over. For women it’s like a shoe safari– we want to see what’s out there, then stalk the members of the herd we like until the price drops and we snap them up!”

Being charitable to my feelings, when I told Steven I only had one pair at a time, he said, “I had a lot of customers and coworkers operate like you. It is a totally legit way to shoe shop, and probably helps keep all that awful capitalist conspicuous consumption bullshit to a minimum. But if you really do love a pair of shoes and want them forever, rotation is best.”

We all have those self-presentation choices that at some point become embarrassing and risk holding us back. For some, it’s an ill-conceived moustache or fingernails bitten down into nubs. I’ve had more than my fair share of styles I’ve had to evolve past. (I mean, I had shoulder length hair in university!) Right now, I need start wearing more than one pair of shoes at a time. But that’s quite the economic bridge to cross. Obviously, I need to get in the habit of going shoe shopping multiple times a year. But even then, how can I afford buying four or five pairs of shoes in the same period I used to buy only one?

“It’s called sales, Max,” my Mom said bluntly. Mothers are so wise.

I bit the bullet last week and forced myself to go sneaker shopping. Uncharacteristically, it didn’t take me all that long to find a pair I liked, probably because they were so similar to the ones I already had. Ruby-red, eighties-influenced Adidas high tops with bulky Velcro straps–they were equal parts Marty McFly and Dorothy Gale. Perhaps I should have branched out in style, but this is the look I feel comfortable in. As Cher says in Clueless, “To thine own self be true.”

I wore my new runners to the opening party for Out of the Box: The Rise of Sneaker Culture at the Bata Shoe Museum, remarkably the first exhibition in North America dedicated to the running shoe. The history of sneakers is tied to the history of rubber, and the earliest examples on display (sleek, black, spikey soled) are from the 19^th century. But I made a beeline directly to the pairs from sneaker’s Baroque period, the 1980’s to the present. Here the once pedestrian sneaker turned beautiful with pairs in emerald green, ruby red, and shimmering gold. One Adidas pair were designed by Jeremy Scott to look like the Haida designs on a totem pole. A pair from Nike had the loud primary colours of a cartoon–they were appropriately titled “Stewie Griffin.”

“Okay, I get it,” I thought. “Even sneakers can be art.”

Downstairs at the party-section of the party, I was chatting with a young man when a photographer approached us with his camera. This doesn’t happen to me all that often, as I’m not famous and don’t dress in the crazy, look-at-me-I’m-a-fashion-blogger manner that begs attention, so I was pretty excited. I definitely want to get my name and face out there. I fixed my hair and prepared to pose, hiding my wine glass behind my leg.

“No, it’s okay,” the photographer said. “I just want your shoes!”

I happily obliged.