Our celebration of The Daily Shoe wouldn’t be complete without visiting Walter Steiger, a legend in the shoe world who’s been designing gorgeous footwear for decades. Recently, his sons joined the family business and the brand has made a huge comeback after being somewhat dormant for awhile.

During the most recent Paris Fashion Week, I met with the Steigers at their showroom on Avenue Matignon. The space was overflowing with so many beautiful shoes, I didn’t know where to begin. There were individual shoes presented on tables (like little works of art), and dozens more strewn across the floor. I was dying to try them on–but everything was a small sample size.

The most interesting part of our interview was Walter’s revelation that the heels in his current collection have the same shape he used back in 1968 (he showed me a photograph of his shoes from that year). The design has been tweaked a bit, of course, to bring it up to date–and Walter has also greatly expanded the number of styles he produces. This latest collection for Spring 2012 is enormous–and there were many, many pairs I absolutely loved.

It sounds crazy, but my favorite shoes in the whole big, inventive collection were a pair of black platforms covered in crystals: despite the elaborate description, they were surprisingly simple and elegant. Walter loves a high heel built on a platform–as he points out, it makes the whole shoe more comfortable. It was a great pleasure to meet this legendary master of his art. Even after a lifetime in the business, he’s still wild about shoes–just like me!

Photographs by Stephane Israël