SO: To become the architect of shoes…

VN: I believe so. I was born with creativity and I’m so blessed for that and I’m blessed to have a passion. I love creative things and I love especially the sexiness and the soulfulness of a shoe. When you read in different religions, even the Bible, they talk about the foot, they talk about shoes. And what a shoe can do for someone’s personality, it’s for your mood. You put on a pair of high heels and you feel a certain way automatically — you’re taller. A good shoe designer, if they can make a stiletto comfortable, we do what doctors can’t, we make you taller. When you put on a sexy shoe, you feel sexy, you stand straight, pelvis out, shoulders back. You sit differently. I went to a Patti LaBelle concert about a month or so ago and there was a big piano on the stage with shoes displayed. As I looked closer and I gasped because I was like, “Those are my shoes displayed on the piano”. She loves them; she displays them in her house like I do with my shoes. I was so happy to see them there on the piano; I was so excited.

SO: Vanessa the hotelier…

VN: I own two hotels and a sushi restaurant. One is called the Vanessa Noel Hotel and it’s all about luxury and no pretension. All the rooms are named after different shoes, so the doors say things like ‘The Stiletto Room’, and there are about eight rooms in that hotel. It’s a very boutique hotel and there’s a wonderful sushi restaurant that seats about 25. We recently copped the award – Best of Massachusetts. My second hotel, launched two years ago, is called Vanessa Noel, Hotel Green. Everything there is chemical-free: from the mattresses we got from Canada to the pillows to the linens we got from France, all aromatherapy, milk-based paints on the wall; it’s fantastic! This one is more SoHo chic while the other hotel is more Park Avenue.