Shoes: A History From Sandals to Sneakers

by Peter McNeil (Editor), Giorgio Riello (Editor)

Anyone who has ever shopped for a pair of shoes--especially anyone who does so with a passion--knows that shoes are much more than functional objects. From the sneaker to the stiletto, shoes have become potent signifiers of gender, class, personality, taste, and even politics. This lavishly illustrated work recounts the history of shoes with entertaining essays that cover everything from the eroticism of ancient shoe lacing, medieval fears about long-toed shoes, and the role of shoes in religious ritual to the infamous Chopine with a 23-inch heel and the modern cult of shoe designers. With 170 color photos and 30 black and white illustrations, the essays will entertain and inform casual shoe shoppers and fashionistas alike.

Genres: Fashion, History, Nonfiction

448 pages, Hardcover

First published October 31, 2006

Reviews

[WORN Fashion Journal]

As an unabashed dilettante, this is precisely the kind of fashion book that appeals to me: broad in concept, rife with details about niche topics, and lushly illustrated with highly saturated colour photos and antique illustrations of the dreamiest, most audacious shoes I will never wear. It looks like a coffee-table book, but the essays are academic in tone, so you can feed your smarts and your eyeballs in a single go.

The collection chronicles the development of (mostly western) footwear, zooming in on specific moments and cultures in fashion history to deliver a broad genesis of the modern shoe and our attitudes toward it. The fantastically illustrated essays present snapshot perspectives on shoes as symbols, as aesthetic phenomena, as bearers of status or power, and as material things that must be put together with the resources and technologies available, yet still conform to the mores, fashions, and cultural constraints of their times. The topics vary widely, bouncing from, say, the evolution of 19th-century army boots to the rhetoric of sneakers to accounts of the sumptuary laws restricting platform heights in the middle ages. My sole complaint is the western, highly Eurocentric bias of the book’s historical arc. While there are a few essays on other cultures’ shoes, these felt more like a genuflection toward cosmopolitan internationalism than an earnest attempt to figure a truly global account. Otherwise, though, I’m a big fan; it’s a great primer on shoe history, and the illustrations truly are drool-worthy. Now, the really pressing question is, how am I going to secure myself a nice satiny pair of 15th-century pianelles in time for the weekend… (reviewed by Emily Raine)

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is a GORGEOUS book: gorgeous format, gorgeous photos, gorgeous shoes. All the chapters offer something, but my favorite was the chapter on military shoes.

[Yinzadi]

Read online here.

[Ubalstecha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed in this book. While it is a lovely history of the shoe, it is coffee table size, but lacking enough illustrations to truly be a coffee book. It does have beautiful pictures, but for something that was envisioned to sit in a living room and be flipped through, they need more of them.

[Jenya · Rating 5 out of 5]

~*~Another very good non-fiction book about the history of shoes! I just love shoes they are my favorite things!

[Emily]

@ Davis.