Whether it is Dorothy’s ruby red shoes with the power to take her home or Cinderella’s glass slipper left on Prince Charming’s doorstep or Marilyn Monroe’s classic white stilettos, the high heel is fashion’s crown jewel.

Shuffling along in a pair of Birkenstocks may be sensible – good for your feet – but a fine pair of high heels in a store window causes the breath to catch, the pulse to quicken, and an instant vow to go without lunch for a month just to own them.

High heels are candy for the eyes. They are poetry for the feet. Gift wrap for your soul. A fine pair of heels represents everything you have ever wanted, from Barbie’s wedding dress to a date with George Clooney. It’s that clicking sound on wood floors that we associate with memories of our mothers. They are our first prom, our first dinner party, our first formal job interview.

High heels are what we wear across the bridge from awkward teenage girl to sophisticated woman.

Chris Faria of Pittsfield – called “Imelda” by her friends – has spent most of her 55 years in fine French or Italian high heels. She possesses at least 200 pairs that are hidden, stored or displayed in every nook and cranny of her three-story Victorian home in Pittsfield. Most are kept in their original boxes stored in a spare bedroom that was made into a dressing room.

She has lost count of exactly how many she owns. “I know it is an obscene number.”

They are red, cream, raspberry or pumpkin – plain or with a little buckle. Black suede with three tiny rhinestones or vintage high heels from the 1960s with contrasting top stitching. Her motto: “Hang on to a good pair of shoes long enough and they will come back into style.”

“Look at that heel,” she almost whispers, holding up a pair of Charles Jourdan shoes she bought at a Paris marketplace. “It’s the shoe. The shoe. It is all about the shoe.”

Oh yes, Chris has hiking boots, ski boots, a pair of rubber Crocs that she wears around the garden. But it is her love affair with high heels that has given her the reputation as central Maine’s shoe diva. Whether they are 6-inch stilettos or the thick heels on her grandmother’s 1940 suede shoes, she touts high heels like Bean’s sells boots.

“With heels, you make a statement of who you are,” she mused. “You get a reaction like ‘Oh!’ that you aren’t going to get from loafers.”

As a 35-year veteran travel agent, Chris has been able to feed her passion all over the world. Whether it is at a Russian bazaar or the cobblestone entrance to an Irish market or on a back street in Paris, it is the high heel that calls to her.

“It’s not a matter of how many pairs of black shoes I need,” Chris explained. “It’s how many I want.”

A good high heel frames and flatters the foot, sliding on ever so softly. It causes the legs to look longer and leaner, and the fanny to perch a bit higher.

But it’s how the shoe makes the wearer feel that hooked Chris as a child when her little feet clomp-clomp-clomped around in her grandmother’s heels.

“She was a dresser,” Chris says, now a size 71/2, sitting in a big easy chair surrounded by dozens of pairs of shoes. She reaches down and picks up a pair of black heels. The alligator leather is soft and supple. The design is classic – a rounded toe, a little scallop at the instep, a formal straight heel. Inside the shoe, the size and style are hand-lettered. The shoes are 75 years old and are so cutting edge they could have been on this fall’s fashion runways.

“These were Nana’s,” Chris says. “Aren’t they exquisite?”

Yvette LaBelle Fournier lived in Westbrook, in a high-heeled time when ladies wore hats to church or tea; when children were taught manners; when everyone dressed for dinner. “It was a time of established rules,” Chris said. “It wasn’t high society, it was just that generation.”

“She was a dresser,” the travel agent recalled. The lesson learned from her French grandmother was simple: “You are what you wear.”

And here is Chris’ biggest shoe surprise of all: She is just as likely to find her shoes on a Goodwill rack or in a Boston thrift store as in a Paris shop window.

Every spring and fall, Chris memorizes the pages of Vogue. “That way, I get to know the names and then I can spot a $200 pair of Bandolino shoes at Marden’s for $15. If I can get a $300 pair of shoes for a buck at Goodwill, I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

Her best buy? Twenty-five cents at a thrift store in Portland for a pair worth $300.

The most she has spent? $150 for a pair of Charles Jourdan heels worth $1,000.

Most shoes ever fit in one bag? During Marden’s fill-a-bag-for-$5 sale, 15 pairs.

Fastest shoe shopping spree? Two minutes – while conducting a tour in Paris and promising the bus driver she’d be back in two minutes if he would just stop at THAT shoe store on the corner.

Some alternative uses of her footwear? Cracking walnuts, pounding in nails and, with one pair that sported a buckle, opening a beer bottle.

“Some people feel this way about furs and diamonds,” she says. “With me, it’s all about the shoes.

“It is the Italian leather and the French design,” she says. “The English make great rain boots and the Austrians make great hiking boots. But who can resist a pair of butter-soft ice blue heels made of Italian leather and found at a secondhand shop in Paris? Are you kidding me? I’d have to buy them, even if they were the wrong size.”

Her shoe habit even helped pay her way through college. She would drive to Maine, fill the trunk of her Fiat with $5 shoes from the Bass outlet and head back to Boston, selling them to schoolmates for $10 a pair.

And she never throws shoes away. One pair has been resoled three times. “A good cobbler is more important than a good dentist,” she joked. She has her Frye boots from the 1970s, platforms from the ’60s, and of course, her grandmother’s perfect size 8 heels from the 1930s, 1940s and ’50s. “If you make an investment in really good shoes, you can have them for 10 or 20 years,” she says. “Shoes are ageless.

“I can be having the worst day, in the most disappointing mood, and just by slipping on those camel-colored heels, or those with the ankle strap – well, everything disappears,” Chris says. “I once walked a tour group all day, through the city of New Orleans over cobblestoned streets in blue Pegabo heels. It’s the shoes that make the statement.

“We’ll see how long I can go,” she says, wistfully looking at the heels strewn around her. “I think it will be forever.”

Sharon Kiley Mack can be reached at bdnpittsfield@verizon.net.

About high heels

Right fit: Try them on. They should go on easily and fit like a glove.

All seasons: If you find a shoe that fits and is beautiful, buy it in every color.

Storage: Boxes are best.

Sources: Marden’s, Goodwill and thrift shops. Boston’s Filene’s Basement and the Women’s Industrial Union thrift shop. Shop during Quebec’s late-winter sales – $250 shoes can easily be found for $29.

Good hose: Never wear shoes with bare feet.