Palace to preserve Imelda's shoes

MANILA, Philippines - The shoe collection of former first lady and now Ilocos Norte Rep. Imelda Marcos, considered a symbol of the excesses of the Marcos regime but which has fallen into disrepair and neglect, is being readied for restoration and better safekeeping, Malacañang said yesterday.

“The plans are to restore them. These items were transferred to the National Museum in June 2010 during the transition,” Undersecretary Manolo Quezon III said in a text message, in reply to queries on what the government intends to do with the items.

“The boxes (where the shoes and clothes were placed) hold no historical significance, except some of the clothes were made by Joe Salazar, Pitoy Moreno and other designers,” Quezon said. 

An AP news report showed that termites have severely damaged several pairs of shoes collected by Marcos while her husband – the late Ferdinand Marcos – was still in power. 

The shoes were left behind when the Marcoses fled the country at the height of a relatively peaceful military-backed civilian uprising in February 1986.

In a statement, the National Museum management assured the public that it would do “its very best on limited resources to carry out its responsibilities in the safekeeping of items placed in its custody.”

Museum officials said the room where the shoes were kept in “sealed” boxes “suffered serious leaks” at the height of the heavy monsoon rains in August.

“The institution hopes to prevent future such occurrences by prioritizing needed structural repairs on the fourth (top) floor of the old legislative building,” a museum statement said, referring to the building on Padre Burgos Avenue in Manila.

The National Museum lamented that government has not made any categorical plan with regard to Imelda’s legendary shoe collection, which has earned her fame and notoriety.

Museum authorities said they decided to seal the boxes “pending plans for their final disposition.”

It has been “in the process of determining whether or not certain items, such as Filipino-designed gowns, could form the core of a fashion collection – a new area for the museum – but this has yet to be even formally proposed given the as yet politically-sensitive nature of their provenance.”

The museum admitted that both the clothing and shoe collection “already suffered serious neglect during this 24-year period (between 1986 and 2010), during which no plan had been formulated regarding their final disposition.”