LIKE a cockroach after a nuclear bomb, Imelda Marcos’s charm has survived what should have been a deadly blow. Back in 1986, a popular revolt ended her 20-year reign as the Philippines’ first lady. She fled to Hawaii with her husband, Ferdinand, leaving behind a grisly record of human rights abuses, corruption and, of course, more than 1,000 pairs of shoes.

Last week, Imelda’s notorious designer footwear was in the news again after officials at the National Museum of the Philippines in Manila discovered that part of their collection had been destroyed by termites and mold. A team of curators is racing to contain the damage.

Yet whatever the damage to those Charles Jourdans and Jimmy Choos, the so-called Steel Butterfly’s seductive power remains largely intact, as revealed in the surprisingly sympathetic new musical “Here Lies Love,” produced by the artist and musician David Byrne. The show played to sold-out audiences in Massachusetts last summer and will open at New York’s Public Theater this spring. It’s named after Imelda’s wish for her epitaph, a typically sugary sentiment from the woman who once referred to the Marcoses’ nine years of military repression as “martial law with a smile.”

As her husband’s partner in what Filipinos have labeled the “conjugal dictatorship,” Imelda could have taught Ronald Reagan a thing or two about Teflon. She fascinated American officials, diplomats and journalists with her striking beauty and lavish hospitality. She waltzed with Reagan and Lyndon B. Johnson, turned over her own bed to a visiting Richard M. Nixon, and helped convince Americans that the Marcoses alone stood between order and Communist chaos — while distracting them from accumulating evidence of torture, executions and disappearances. Mr. Marcos treasured Imelda as a political asset, once calling her his “secret weapon.” Yet after the dust cleared, it was obvious that her hubris had hastened his downfall.