A La Mode – Part Nine
Crakows or Poulaines
Do you remember winklepickers, the fashion accessory of choice of rockers in the late 1950s and 1960s? The shoes had long pointed toes and there was a joke, or what passed as a joke, which did the rounds at the time which went something like this; “Policeman: do your toes reach the end of your shoes, sonny? Youth: does your head reach the top of your helmet?” Collapse of stout parties.
Long pointed shoes have a long history, first making their appearance as far back as the 12th century, initially in Poland. They were known as crakows or poulaines, the latter term meaning shoes in the Polish fashion. Their principal feature was a long pointed tip, often half the length of the shoe. The richer members of society wore even longer tips to show off their wealth and in order to keep their shape they were stuffed with material such as moss. Further reinforcement was provided by pattens which were a sort of overshoe made from leather or cork.
Bonkers they may have been but they were wildly popular amongst the fashion conscious, even reaching the backwaters that were mediaeval England by the mid 14th century. The anonymous author of Eulogium Historiarum, dating from around 1360, complained of English men wearing “points on their shoes as long as your finger that are called crakowes; more suitable as claws… for demons than as ornaments for men.”
The height of fashion they may have been but practical they were not. The difficulties crakows presented the wearer in simply getting around were manna from heaven for those who took a dim view of the dedicated followers of fashion of the time. An anonymous monk from Evesham fumed in 1394 about “those accursed vices half a yard in length, thus it was necessary for them to be tied to the shin with chains of silver before they could walk with them.” An English poem dating to 1388 noted that the length of the toes on crakows made it difficult for men to kneel in prayer, and that just wouldn’t do.
Even more bizarrely, the best dressed knights also sported lengthy poulaines. They may have cut a dash on the parade ground and the jousting lists but in the heat of battle they proved a tad impractical. Swiss chroniclers report that during the Battle of Sempach in 1386, a decisive victory for the Swiss over the Austrian troops of Leopold III, the Austrian knights had to dismount and were forced to cut off the tips of their poulaines so that they could manoeuvre on foot. A huge pile of poulaines were found after the battle and they make a surprising background in an illustration of the battle in the Lucerne Chronicle of 1513.
Despite all the challenges they posed to the wearer, crakows reached the height of their popularity in the third quarter of the 15th century. They were worn outdoors as well as indoors, by women as well as men, but by then the length of the tip had settled down to around 50% of the shoe.
But their time in the sun was soon to be over. In 1463 Edward IV passed a law forbidding anyone, other than a gentleman, from wearing poulaines longer than two inches and two years later, banned them altogether, limiting the point to just two inches. Almost a century earlier, in 1368, Charles V of France had a go at halting the tide of fashion by banning their use and manufacture in Paris, but to no avail. Official strictures, ridicule and the fickleness of fashion eventually saw them falling out of favour in the 16th century.
Until the 1950s, that is.
