Beaux pieds

 

"You have beautiful feet, you know!"

A cordonnerie plays off the famous line from old French film, "Le Quai des Brumes" (1938) when Jean Gabin tells Michèle Morgan, "T'as d'beaux yeux, tu sais!"

Translation: "You have beautiful eyes, you know!"

 

A mile in their pompes

 "If you walk a mile in my shoes you'll end up in a wine bar!"

@WineWankers on Twitter 

 

"Walk a mile in her shoes and you'll get champignons des pieds!"- Waiter at local café on an étrangère taking up three booth spaces when sitting

 

"Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes." - Steve Martin

 

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Paris is a walkable city, and cordonneries - shoe repair shops - are everywhere. Come winter, expect to get in line behind a crush of shivering customers waiting to drop off that favorite pair of boots that's trod cobbled byways, sometimes for decades.

My husband recounts the days his father would meticulously shine his "pompes" - slang for shoes for both men and women - many an evening, preparing them for the office the next day, proudly pointing out how he's had them going all the way back to business school. Oh there were times they needed new soles or a section had to be re-sewn, but crucially, they were made by hand, lovingly stored upright and supported by wooden shoe trees, year after year, the shine on the leather provoking smiles of approval.

Eventually the term pompes walked its way into the English language to become "pumps" - women's shoes characterized by a pointy toe and slim heel - some speculate a derivative of the 16th and 17th century French pompes worn by men.

There is a French expression, "marcher á coté de ses pompes!" that translates to, "walk next to his shoes!" In fact it's a colorful, slightly surreal way of saying someone has lost touch with reality, is acting crazy, or is "not all there." Kind of like, "he's not playing with a full deck" in English.

But what about those pompes funebres all over Paris? These are not shoe shops that specialize in footwear for funerals, as an American woman in Paris mistakenly surmised, but funeral parlors. Apparently, she went inside one only to instantly realize that the man in the gray suit was not there to measure her feet. Or maybe he was. - BPJ

The cobbler

 

 This mechanical cobbler is a fixture in a cordonnerie window on rue des Abbesses.

 

 

Shoe repère

 

 An ancienne cordonnerie-now-coffeehouse is a popular point de repère.

Boot Café
19 rue du Pont aux Choux 75003