Take a walk, or faire une promenade as the French say, across Sloane Square and a little further on past Chelsea's in your face fashion capital and then a right into Ellis Street you will come across French Sole.

5 stars! why such high acclaim for what basically is 'just' a shoe shop? well this is not any old shoe shop. French sole sell only ballet pumps, in as many imaginative variations, colours and styles as can fit into the tiny shop.

Being a customer here is actually an experience in itself. Hosted by the young tweeny Chelsea set the assistants are always polite, smiling and attired in their own French sole'd footware to admire and to covet.

This is exclusive decadent and boutique footware that has been seen 'out and about' on the pages of vogue and associated with all manner of celebrity from the royals, models and has escaped the riff n raff of Z-list BB reject status. Unless you count Amy Winehouse in those stakes...

Sole's are a tad pricey. Be prepared to pay a minimum of £55 for per pair of ballet pumps. Having said that I am prepared to fork out this costly sum as 1. the designs are devine, 2. all are fabulously comfortable and 3. i wear these little delights until they rip apart and completely wear out.

The shop itself is stacked floor to ceiling with shoe boxes. It's also fun watching the Chelsea tweenies run down and then up again the stairs in search of your perfect right size and colour. Slightly antiquainted, but 'quaint' is the payment procedure when the receipt is written out by hand. Cute.

Be prepared to be seduced by more than one pair. It's happened to me, but i've always loved the experience of shopping here and skipping away with my prize purchases. If you can, stay away from a saturday afternoon when the shop is too full to be fun.

Much better to pick a rainy afternoon to pirouette round the shop by yourself.