Manila: Former first lady Imelda Marcos has a total of eight male grandchildren by her three children, so no one would be interested to inherit her famous collection of about 3,000 pairs of shoes, which were left behind after a people-backed military mutiny ousted her husband dictator Ferdinand Marcos, prompting them to live in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1986, a local paper said.

“Irene [Marcos-Araneta], Bongbong [Ferdinand Marcos Jr] and I have sons and no daughters, so no one would inherit the Imeldific shoes,” Imee Marcos, governor of Ilocos Norte in northern Luzon told the Inquirer.

Middle child, Senator Bongbong Marcos, born in 1957, and his wife, lawyer Louise “Liza” Araneta have three sons: Ferdinand Alexander “Sandor”, born in 1994, Joseph Simon, born in 1995, and William Vincent, born in 1997.

Eldest daughter Maria Imelda “Imee” Marcos, born in 1955, has three children by her estranged husband, former golfer and basketball coach Tommy Manotoc. They are Fernando Marin “Borgy,” a commercial model, Michael, and Matthew Joseph. The last two were identified as students of the New York University and Claremont McKenna College, respectively.

Marcos’ youngest presidential daughter Irene (born in 1961) has two sons by Greggy Araneta, Alfonso and Luis.

Workers in a museum of shoes in suburban Marikina, known as shoe city, saved its collection of 300 pairs of Marcos’ shoes when typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy) hit Metro Manila in 2009.

Other sources said the museum has a collection of 700 pairs. The collection includes a pair of disco shoes with heels that light up, knee high leather boots, and a shoe phone, all size eight-and-a-half.

Apart from shoes locally handcrafted in Marikina, the collection features shoes made by world famous designers such as Salvatorre Ferragamo, Charles Jourdan, Beltrami, Bally, and the Philippines’ Mario Katigbak.

When the museum was opened in 2001, Marcos gave exciting sound bites about her penchant for pumps.

“The museum is making a subject of notoriety into an object of beauty,” she told the BBC, adding, “This museum will symbolise the spirit and culture of the Filipino people.”

“They [my detractors] went into my closets [when I was out of the country in 1986] looking for skeletons, but thank God, all they found were shoes, beautiful shoes,” she also said.

The whereabouts of the rest of the 3,000 pairs of shoes originally found in her room at Malacanang the presidential palace in 1986, is not known.

‘Here lies love’

The former first lady’s love for shoes has inspired several creative works.

British composer Richard Thomas opened, Shoes, an opera at Sadler’s Wells in London in March 2011.

In 2010, David Bryne, a Scottish songwriter who lived in Canada and the United States, made a disco opera entitled Here Lies Love, based on Marcos’ penchant for shoes.

In 1988, Big Audio Dynamite, a British band, was inspired to write a song about Imelda’s shoes, making them a symbol of greed.