PAIR PULLS OFF A NEAT FEAT COUPLE CREATES STORE WITH SOLE.

Byline: TONY CASTRO Staff Writer

SHERMAN OAKS -- If Cinderella can be found in the near-midnight hour of a glitzy night club in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Mark Willingham believed he had done it.

So would anyone fortunate enough to have Leticia Quintela look their way. For Willingham, then in his perfect Prince Charming age of 30, a marketing specialist who grew up in Westlake Village, it was love at first sight.

He loved Quintela's sun-bleached caramel hair, her perfect olive skin, her brownish eyes with the tiniest pupils God ever gave anyone, and the way she dressed her 5-foot-4, size 2 frame.

``She was exotically beautiful,'' he recalls. ``She was a fashionista.''

Within a year, Quintela had given up her flight attendant job with a Brazilian airline and joined Willingham in Westlake Village, and they soon married.

Ah, but the stilettos. If only Willingham had paid closer attention to Quintela's perfectly pedicured size 6 1/2 feet, and especially to the to-die-for Carmen Steffens evening stilettos that enveloped them.

Not your local shoe

Nothing in any U.S. stores -- not even the high-end designer boutiques on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills -- could compare in the mind of the fashionista Leticia. So every few months, she would pack up and make the 13-hour flight from LAX to Rio de Janeiro to go shopping, with Willingham in tow.

``Every time we would go out here in L.A., there would be women who come up to Leticia to compliment her on her shoes or to ask, `Where did you buy those shoes?' or `Where did you get that handbag?'' says Willingham.

This went on only so long before the marketing light went off for Willingham.

``When the market starts talking about it,'' he says, ``you know it's time to do something.''

Through Leticia and the growing interest he was seeing in the shoes she wore, Willingham had slowly come to understand something few men ever do -- the obsession of many women with what they wear on their feet.

According to a survey by Harpers Bazaar magazine, one out of every four women say they would buy another pair of shoes instead of pay the bills. In the wardrobe of one of two women, there are more than 30 pairs of shoes, while 8 percent own more than 100 pairs each.

All Willingham had to do to know that was true was to look in Leticia's closet off the second-floor master bedroom of their home.

There, perfectly arranged by color and style, you'll find a shoe-lover's dream: Rows of beautifully kept Carmen Steffens shoes and boots. Willingham estimates there to be at least 100. Sure. Alone, Leticia admits that the number is higher and always changing.

A well-heeled plan

Marketing-whiz Willingham rounded up some business partners, including Leticia, and decided to bring Brazil to the U.S. They bought into Carmen Steffens, the company making the shoes and leather goods Leticia couldn't live without, and last month opened a Carmen Steffens American-flagship store at the Westfield Fashion Square Mall in Sherman Oaks.

``Even when we were planning the store,'' says Willingham, ``I was getting signals that this was what we needed to do.''

Once, when he met with partners at the Cheesecake Factory, their waitress drooled over publicity photos that Willingham was showing of some Carmen Steffens boots.

``She wanted to know where she could get these boots,'' says Willingham, ``then she went and got two other waitresses who also loved them. They kept talking about how these boots were beautiful and different than anything they'd ever seen, and they gave me their e-mail addresses because they wanted to be notified as soon as we opened the store.''

Shoe glue

Today, their store has become as much of an obsession for the Willinghams, who have now been married 10 years, as the Carmen Steffens shoes have always been for Leticia.

Walk inside the store, and the first thing you'll be asked is how you would like your espresso.

Then there's the shoes, the boots and the leather goods, which start around $100, although more intricate styles are pricier.

Some have the most unique, wafer-thin leather distressed to look like the ancient maps Columbus must have used to sail to the New World. Others appear so uniquely one-of-a-kind, and they almost are.

``They are all hand-made in very limited numbers,'' says Leticia, whose Sonia Braga accent makes you understand why Willingham couldn't resist her, ``and once they're sold, they're all gone.

``There is no back-stock in inventory because there is no inventory.''

Most of the boots, high heels and sandals you see in the store have the ``look'' of celebrity shoes -- but without the price tag of Prada and Manolo Blahnik -- the kind you see in People magazine on the feet of J.Lo, Shania or Jessica.

Hollywood stylist Art Conn agrees, which is one of the reasons he's putting clients from CBS' ``Rock Star: Supernova'' in Carmen Steffens and thinking of using the shoes on contestants of Fox Network's ``American Idol'' new season.

``What's the best about Carmen Steffens,'' says Conn, ``is that they cover all aspects -- dressy evening shoes, going out boots, everything you could want in one store -- and that's not always the case.''

It's all good news to the Willinghams, who wake up and go to bed every day and night thinking about just two things -- each other and Carmen Steffens.

``I've always loved Carmen Steffens shoes,'' says Leticia. ``They're my life. They're me.''

tony.castro(at)dailynews.com

[phone]

Carmen Steffens

is open at Westfield Fashion Square, 14006 Riverside Drive, Sherman Oaks. Call [phone] or see www.carmensteffens.com.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- 2 -- color) Mark and Leticia Willingham, above, operate a Carmen Steffens shop in Sherman Oaks that sells Brazilian shoes and leather goods. The love story between Mark, an American, and Leticia, a Brazilian, led to their business venture. Right, a limited number of high-heeled leather boots with a tattoo design are available for $374 at the couple's Carmen Steffens shop.

(3) A leather handbag with a laser-cut lace design is available for $269 at the Carmen Steffens shop in Sherman Oaks.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer

Box:

Carmen Steffens (see text)