A Manolo Blahnik shoe (The New York Post)
Women from the
Ankle Down
The Story of Shoes
and How They Define Us
by Rachelle Bergstein
Harper
Shoes — there are very few words that elicit such Pavlovian responses from most women.
Red-soled Louboutins, classic Mary Janes, sky-high Alexander McQueen wedges: Whether or not we can afford them, most women can say that at one point or another, we’ve drooled over them.
Our love affair with shoes began in ancient Greece when people of high station wore elevated heels. But they didn’t rise to the level of lust until the early 20th century, when factories were able to make a variety of shoes cheaply.
“This diversity is the hallmark of the contemporary shoe scene,” writes author Rachelle Bergstein in the fun “Women from the Ankle Down.” “Never before in history have so many people — men and women — of all areas of life, been so willing to shell out astronomical sums for shoes.”
Today, the average woman will buy 469 pairs of shoes during her lifetime, shelling out around $25,000 — at around $53 per pair — according to a recent poll.
But why does footwear — as compared to jewelry or fancy dresses — capture so many imaginations? As Bergstein points out: Shoes are about more than just adornment, they’re wrapped up in history, prevailing notions of femininity and the role of women in society.
“Shoes, like works of art, are inextricably bound to the world in which they’re produced,” she writes.
Here, some of the shoes that defined the era they came from:
1920’s
Mary Janes
Before World War I, shoes were primarily made by local cobblers, and the styles were limited, mainly black, white or brown and only one of three styles: low-heeled pumps, Oxfords or buttoned or laced-up Edwardian boots.
But as the production was moved to nearby factories, shoes became cheaper and easier to make. The result was that women could now take their fashion cues from editorials or movies.
Enter the girlish Mary Jane, named for shoes worn by a character in the comic strip Buster Brown, which had fastening in the front that made it comfortable but still naughty enough for dancing.
1930’s
Ferragamo
Wedges
Shoemaker Salvatore Ferragamo — the man known as the “shoemaker to the stars” who brought Italian imported shoes to the US — invented the wedge in the mid-1930s as a reaction to the scarcity of materials leading up to World War II.
Without steel, he couldn’t make heels. So he asked himself: “Why not fill in the space between the heel and the ball of the foot?”
Using cork, he filled in a platform and sold it to his most influential clients. Almost overnight “lifties” or “wedgies” were born. By 1939, Ferragamo estimated that 86% of shoes made in the US were wedges.
Singer Carmen Miranda commissioned one “decorated with plastic fruit,” and Ferragamo designed a pair called “Rainbow” for actress Judy Garland in 1938 made out of colored chamois and straps of gold kid leather.
1940’s
Dorothy’s ruby
red slippers
Though the book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” called for silver shoes, when producers got their hands on the script, they changed it to a more brilliant red. Producers also altered the plain flat to a standard round toe pump with a low French or curved heel.
The pumps were made of white silk, lined with white kid leather and then dyed red and adorned with crepe georgette overlay and sequins.
These ruby red slippers were “both covetable and comforting,” which was important in the growing unease and economic instability bubbling at the dawn of World War II. “The Wizard of Oz” hit theaters in 1939, and by the next year, red replaced gray as the new “it” color.
1950’s
Stilettos
The “New Look” created by French couturier Christian Dior was neither appropriate nor useful — a reaction to the utilitarian fashions that came out during wartime.
In 1953, Dior joined forces with designer Roger Vivier, who created the first stiletto heel. The shoe put pressure on the ball of a foot, making walking in them a practiced skill that was “so clearly divorced from function.”
This served to reinforce class and gender structures that went into flux during the war: “This in turn put women back on a pedestal and assisted in keeping them from their wartime jobs — nobody wears stilettos to build airplanes,” Bergstein argues.
1960’s
Go-Go boots
A pair of knee-high, white boots—that’s what most of us think when we hear the song “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.”
Nancy Sinatra, daughter of Ol’ Blue Eyes, brought the boots, which were already growing in popularity with the mods on Carnaby Street in London— to the masses with her 1966 hit song.
Soon the demand for boots was so great that Saks Fifth Avenue devoted an entire corner of its famous shoe department to bootery.
The subtext of the trend was women’s emancipation. Boots were literally made for walking.
“If high heels signaled the presence of an ambitious woman who used her sexuality to get what she wanted, boots became an indication of a female character’s physical and moral strength,” Bergstein writes.
1970’s
Platforms
Androgny found a place in early 1970s culture. Designers like Biba and Terry de Havilland and companies like Kork-Ease popularized the platform heel (clogs and wedges in rainbows of colors) for both men and women.
For the first time in the past century (not since the courts of Louis XIV had men wore heels with any regularity), men’s and women’s footwear fashions were almost exactly the same.
Everyone from Marc Bolan from the band T-Rex and John Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever” wore multicolored heels.
David Bowie might have had the best collection though: “Red, vinyl-knee-high platforms, black, lace-up stiletto fetish boots — exaggerated Bowie’s lanky proportions and his unusual sex appeal,” Bergstein writes.
1980’s
Sneakers
The glass ceiling was cracking, and women were rising up the corporate ladder. But it wasn’t an easy walk.
In 1980, NYC had a massive transit strike that forced many businesswomen to stash their power heels in their bags and put on sneakers.
“It became the defining image of the transit strike: businesswomen in skirt suits, nude stockings and white athletic shoes,” she writes.
It was around then that Reebok came out with their signature line: “Life is not a spectator sport.” Sneakers became serious business and women (including actress Lara Flynn Boyle, above) grabbed them in droves.
1990’s
Doc
Martens
The grunge era was defined by a shoe made a half-century before — by German doctor Klaus Maertens, who had injured his foot while skiing and wanted a sturdy combat boot.
Everyone from skinheads to communists trounced around in the shoes — and even wore different color laces to tip their hat to their role in the alt scene.
2000’s
Manolos
Though Manolos had been around since the 1980s and had already became synonymous with wealth, it wasn’t until “Sex and the City” that the handcrafted shoes hit a mass audience.
“Buying a $400 plus pair of shoes, once a birthright for a very particular class of women, turned into a rite of passage for anyone who aspired to be like Carrie,” Bergstein writes.
“The fact is, sometimes it’s really hard to walk in a single woman’s shoes,” Carrie Bradshaw says in an episode. “That’s why we need really special ones now and then to make the walk more fun.”