Whoopi Goldberg’s Shoe-and-Tell | The New Yorker

People have been talking about Whoopi Goldberg’s shoe collection. Goldberg owns two hundred and eighty-eight pairs—including, but not limited to, heels, sneakers, pointy-toed flats, Birkenstocks, Converses, wedges, boots, platforms, Crocs, flip-flops, and loafers. Several sources say that, if you win Goldberg’s favor, she may give you a pair right off her feet. Past beneficiaries include a former “X-Factor” contestant, the comedian Whitney Cummings, and even a few audience members of “The View.” A visit seemed in order.

“What do you want to know?” Goldberg said one recent afternoon, in her gravelly voice. She was in the lower-Manhattan headquarters of her company, Whoop, Inc., after a live taping of “The View,” where she has been a co-host since 2007. She had on a billowy leopard-print top worn open over denim overalls and a white shirt. Shoe of the day: black Cloud sneakers ($150). After receiving a reminder of the research mission, Goldberg nodded and dove right into the task.

Her size, she said, ranged from ten to eleven and a half, depending on the brand and model. She walked into her dressing room and turned to face a combination desk-shelving system with twenty-four white-painted wooden shelves. The shelves held neat rows of footwear, arranged according to designer. Notable pairs: glittery Dr. Martens, banana-peel heels, pumps whose transparent heels contain decapitated dolls’ heads, Gucci Peggy sneakers.

She explained the origin of the hoard. “Well, when I first got on ‘The View,’ all of the women were very well dressed,” she said. “You know, they are given clothes every day, and jewelry.” She went on, a bit huffily, “And I knew I wasn’t going to be taking my clothes on and off there!” She figured that sticking to her personal uniform—“I like black and white, and oversized, and tents”—and experimenting with shoes was a good compromise. “Some of the first ones—I’m trying to remember,” she said, gazing at the racks. “Oh! These folks.” She held up a pair of Star Wars pumps with lightsabre heels from a British brand called Irregular Choice. Next she reached for a variety of trompe-l’oeil heels, designed to look like puppy paws, pelicans, and Olive Oyl. One pair had a heel that resembled a wad of gum. “Now come on, what’s better than that?” she said, holding the shoe aloft like an Oscar. (She has one of those, too.) “It looks like you stepped in gum!”

She continued the survey—gothic golden heels from Alexander McQueen’s final runway collection, never-worn Jeremy Scott x Adidas sneakers. She snatched a black Louboutin spike heel and held it to her cheek, cooing, “That red bottom, that red bottom.”

Three years ago, Goldberg was diagnosed as having sciatica, which forced her to quit the heels. “Because once your back goes you’re, like, ‘O.K., I’m not fooling with this,’ ” she said. “But every now and then, you know, I think, ‘I would like to put on something fun.’” At the Oscars recently, she busted out black velvet Caroline Groves heels, decorated with embroidered flowers and silk bows.

Her joie-de-vivre approach to style has not always been appreciated. She recalled the scathing reviews she got for her 1993 Oscars red-carpet look, which she called an homage to Lucille Ball. It featured a lime-green-and-purple brocade jumpsuit, with skinny legs and a skirted bolero jacket. “Baby, you’d’ve thought I’d pooped all over somebody’s house,” she said. Her shoes that night were satin spike heels, designed in the same fabric as her outfit.

Nowadays, Goldberg wears what she wants for “The View.” She does not have a stylist. “I wake up, and whatever I’m in, that’s what I show up in,” she said. She raised a finger in clarification. “But I am clean!” she added. “I am clean.” When a designer dresses her for a red carpet or such, she gives the person carte blanche, and doesn’t even look at preliminary sketches. Otherwise, she said, “I realize that I’m going to say no to everything, because my comfort zone is only this big.” She pantomimed a tiny opening.

Mulling a second Trump Administration, she said that her staple shoe going forward would be a sneaker. “I think the next couple of years are all about folks making themselves comfortable,” she said. “You say, ‘These are my favorite pants—I’m wearing them. I don’t care how often you’ve seen them, these are the pants I’m wearing.’ ” Same goes for the shoes. ♦