Shoes

"Stop looking down at your feet and stare straight ahead," says Queen Jazzmun, as I skitter across the hardwood floor in 6-inch Barbara Bui platforms like a newborn giraffe. "The heels are the mistress, and you are the slave. Submit." But who's going to submit my health insurance forms when I am laid up at Cedars, I wonder, during a Sunday afternoon primer on how to walk in high heels. The private instruction came about because Jazzmun -- a transvestite performer and actor/actress -- had recently taught 18 women how to glide atop designer stilts at a course offered by shoe boutique Il Primo Passo in Santa Monica.

There's a moment in Douglas Carter Beane's satire "The Little Dog Laughed" at the Kirk Douglas Theatre when closeted actor Mitchell (Brian Henderson) and hooker boy Alex (Johnny Galecki) realize they actually like each other. They quickly start shedding clothes until there's nothing left to shed. Just as they're about to get down to business, so to speak, Mitchell's slick Hollywood agent, Diane (Julie White), bursts into the room. The audience gasps. Culture Monster stares. Now, stop it, you gutter-minds -- we're not talking about the boys in the buff.

Shoes are to this industrial city what cars are to Detroit. And like the Motor City, Mexico's footwear capital is feeling the heat of foreign competition. The threat might not be apparent from the billboards hawking Mexican-made sneakers, boots and dress shoes that line the highway leading into town. Or from the malls devoted entirely to shoe stores. A statue of a cobbler graces a major thoroughfare. A footwear museum is under construction.

Two more basketball coaches are shedding their shoes for needy children, this time in a game tonight at Riverside City College. Riverside Coach John Smith said he was told by a cousin about Ron Hunter, the coach at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis who guided his team in his bare feet during a game last month to raise donations for shoes for children around the world. Smith then became interested in the cause and persuaded Fullerton College Coach Allen Caveness to join him.

MANOLO BLAHNIK became a household name when "Sex and the City" made his sexy stilettos practically a member of the cast. But before Carrie Bradshaw started giving him shout-outs, the shoe guru was already a star to the well-heeled women who wear and collect his designs -- a list that includes Madonna, Bianca Jagger and Diane von Furstenberg. Blahnik's shoes are a perennial on Hollywood red carpets -- as common as Spanx and cleavage tape.

LOS ANGELES is the international capital of the red carpet event and has plenty of designers peddling sumptuous evening wear. But as far as footwear goes, the city probably has been best known for skate shoes, sneakers and flip-flops. Until now, anyway.

Skateboard icon Tony Hawk has signed an exclusive deal with Kohl's Corp. to sell footwear under his brand through the mid-level retailer. Hawk will begin selling his shoes at Kohl's 800-some stores and its website this month, the company was set to announce today. The fashion and skate shoes will be targeted to young men and boys. Menomonee Falls, Wis.-based Kohl's plans to price the Hawk line at about $40 a pair.

WHEN Peter Valk, a race walker and walking coach, fires up a new team of walkers, the first thing he tells them is, "It's all about the feet." Valk, 53, of Calabasas, walks 30 miles a week. Over the last five years, he has crossed the finish lines of 13 marathons to support Team in Training, a fundraising effort for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. (He is a leukemia survivor.) He coaches others to do the same. "Shoes," he says, "are a walker's single most important piece of equipment.

GOLD-plated rims, diamond-studded teeth. It was only a matter of time before sneakers got the same flash-custom treatment. So now, it's possible to spend thousands -- tens of thousands -- bejeweling your shoelaces. The designers at Greedy Genius created diamond eyelets to accessorize their sneakers -- and they're selling at Barneys New York and www.greedygenius.com. The interchangeable eyelets in 14k white, yellow or rose gold run from $2,800 to $6,000 for a set of 28.

AND you thought you had a shoe fetish before. Season by season, inch by inch, high fashion has been stepping toward the kind of skyscraper stilettos and pumped-up platforms that used to belong solely to the sexual underground. And now the trend has hit a new height in kink: Some of the biggest names are offering the most extreme footwear -- studded six-inch heels at Dolce & Gabbana, harness straps at Gucci, near-vertical insteps strapped and plated like gladiators at Christian Dior.