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“You never truly know someone until you have walked a mile in his shoes.”

Anonymous

Seducta shoe, 1954

International Shoe Museum, Romans

Aside from noticing a shoe for its comfort or elegance, contemporaries rarely take interest in this necessary object of daily life. However, the shoe is considerable in the history of civilization and art.

In losing contact with nature, we have lost sight of the shoe’s profound significance. In recapturing this contact, in particular through sports, we begin its rediscovery.

Wooden sandal inlayed with gold, treasure of Tutankhamen

18th Dynasty

Thebes

Cairo Museum, Cairo

Shoes for skiing, hiking, hunting, football, tennis or horse-riding are carefully chosen, indispensable tools as well as revealing signs of occupation or taste.

In previous centuries, when people depended more on the climate, vegetation and condition of the soil, while most jobs involved physical labor, the shoe held an importance for everyone which today it holds for very few.

Egyptian sandal made of plant fibers

Bally Museum, Schönenwerd, Switzerland

We do not wear the same shoes in snow as in the tropics, in the forest as in the steppe, in the swamps as in the mountains or when working, hunting or fishing. For this reason, shoes give precious indications of habitats and modes of life. In strongly hierarchical societies, organized by castes or orders, clothing was determinant.

Sandals

Found in the fortress of Massada

Princesses, bourgeoisie, soldiers, clergy and servants were differentiated by what they wore. The shoe revealed, less spectacularly than the hat, but in a more demanding way, the respective brilliance of civilizations, unveiling the social classes and the subtlety of the race; a sign of recognition, just as the ring slips only on to the most slender finger, the “glass slipper” will not fit but the most delicate of beauties.

Iron shoe

Syria, 800 BC

Bally Museum, Schönenwerd, Switzerland

The shoe transmits its message to us by the customs which impose and condition it. It teaches us of the deformations that were forced on the feet of Chinese women and shows us how in India, by conserving the unusual boots, the nomadic horsemen of the North attained their sovereignty over the Indian continent; we learn that ice-skates evoke the Hammans while babouches suggest the Islamic interdiction to enter holy places with covered feet.

Silver sandal

Byzantine period

Bally Museum, Schönenwerd, Switzerland

Sometimes the shoe is symbolic, evoked in ritual or tied to a crucial moment of existence. One tells of the purpose high-heels served: to make the woman taller on her wedding night in order to remind her that it is the only moment when she will dominate her husband.

The boots of the Shaman were decorated with animal skins and bones in order to emulate the stag; as the stag, he could run in the world of spirits.

Man’s slipper

Vamp decorated with motifs gilded with gold leaf

Egypt, Coptic era

International Shoe Museum, Romans

We are what we wear, so if to ascend to a higher life it is necessary to ornate the head, if it becomes an issue of ease of movement, it is the feet that are suited for adornment. Athena had shoes of gold, for Hermes, it was heels. Perseus, in search of flight, went to the nymphs to find winged sandals.

Liturgical shoe of plain embroidered samite

Spain, 12th century

Silk and gold thread

Textile Museum, Lyon

Tales respond to mythology. The seven-league boots, which enlarged or shrank to fit the ogre or Tom Thumb, allowed them both to run across the universe. “You have only to make me a pair of boots,” said Puss in Boots to his master, “and you will see that you are not so badly dealt as you believe.”

Poulaine style shoe

Bally Museum, Schönenwerd, Switzerland

Does the shoe therefore serve to transcend the foot, often considered as the most modest and least favored part of the human body? Occasionally, without a doubt, but not always. The barefoot is not always deprived of the sacred and, thus, can communicate this to the shoe. Those who supplicate or venerate the shoe are constantly throwing themselves at the feet of men; it is the feet of men who leave a trace on humid or dusty ground, often the only witness to their passage.

Poulaine

Bally Museum, Schönenwerd, Switzerland

A specific accessory, the shoe can sometimes serve to represent he who has worn it, who has disappeared, of whom we do not dare to retrace the traits; the most characteristic example is offered by primitive Buddhism evoking the image of its founder by a seat or by a footprint.

Man’s shoe in black distressed leather upturned pointed toe, studded soul, claw heel

Persia, 15th-16th century

International Shoe Museum, Romans

Made of the most diverse materials, from leather to wood, from fabric to straw, or whether naked or ornamented, the shoe, by its form and decoration, becomes an object of art. If the form is sometimes more functional than esthetic, the design of the cloth, the broidery, the incrustations, the choice of colors, always closely reveal the artistic characteristics of their native country.

Chopine

Venice, 16th century

International Shoe Museum, Romans

The essential interest comes from that which it is not; weapons or musical instruments are reserved for a caste or a determined social group, carpets are the products of only one or two civilizations, it does not stand up as a “sumptuous” object of the rich classes or a folkloric object of the poor.

Woman’s shoe

Henri III period, France, 16th century

International Shoe Museum, Romans

The shoe has been used from the bottom to the top of the social ladder, by all the individuals of any given group, from group to group, by the entire world.

It seems that man has always instinctively covered his feet to get about, although there remains no concrete evidence of the shoes themselves.

Woman’s shoe

Italy, 17th century

International Shoe Museum, Romans

Prehistoric shoes would have been rough in design and certainly utilitarian in function. The materials were chosen primarily for their ability to shield the feet from severe conditions. It was only in Antiquity that the shoe would acquire an aesthetic and decorative dimension, becoming a true indicator of social status.

Musketeer boot

France, 17th century

International Shoe Museum, Romans

From the first great civilizations flourishing in Mesopotamia and Egypt in the 4th millennium BC arose also the three basic types of footwear: the shoe, the boot, and the sandal. An archeological team excavating a temple in the city of Brak (Syria) in 1938 unearthed a clay shoe with a raised toe dating over 3,000 years before the birth of Christ.

Woman’s shoe in blue leather with decoration embroidered in silver

Italy, 17th century

International Shoe Museum, Romans, deposit of the Musée National du Moyen Age, Thermes de Cluny, Paris

The raised-toe form is attributable to the rugged terrain of the mountain conquerors that introduced it. After its adoption by the Akkadian kingdom, the form spread to Middle East where the Hittites made it a part of their national costume. It is frequently depicted in bas-reliefs, such as the Yazilikaya sanctuary carvings dating to 1275 BC. Seafaring Phoenicians helped spread the pointed shoe to Cyprus, Mycenae, and Crete, where it appears on palace frescoes.

Woman’s shoe with its protective clog

Louis XIV period, 17th century

International Shoe Museum, Romans, deposit of the Musée National du Moyen Age, Thermes de Cluny, Paris

The Mesopotamian empire of Assyria dominated the ancient east from the 9th to the 7th century BC and erected monuments whose sculptures depict the sandal and the boot. Their sandal is a simplified shoe composed of a sole and straps. Their boot is tall, covering the leg; a type of footwear associated with horsemen.

Woman’s shoe in damask embroidered with threads of gold and silver

Louis XIV period, 17th century

International Shoe Museum, Romans

Deposit of the Musée National du Moyen Age, Thermes de Cluny, Paris

The Persian dynasty, founded by Cyrus the Great II around 550 BC, gradually established a homogeneous culture in the ancient east. Processional bas-reliefs carved by sculptors of the Achaemenidian kings offer a documentary record of the period’s costume and footwear. In addition to images of boots, there are shoes made of supple materials and of leather shown completely covering the foot and closing at the ankle with laces.

Rider’s boot Steel-Tipped, claw heel

Persia, 17th century

International Shoe Museum, Romans

For a deeper understanding of how the shoe evolved from its origins to the present day, it is important to look at ancient civilizations in their historical context.

As in Egypt, the most popular shoe in Greece was the sandal. The Homeric heroes of The Iliad and The Odyssey wear sandals with bronze soles, while the gods wear sandals made of gold.

Shoe belonging to Henri II de Montmorency

France, 17th century

Leather decorated with a fleur-de-lis on the vamp

Initials of the duke on the flap

International Shoe Museum, Romans, deposit of the Musée National du Moyen Age, Thermes de Cluny, Paris

Agamemnon, legendary king of Mycenae, protected his legs with the help of leg armor fastened with silver hooks.

Rome was the direct heir to Greek civilization and felt its influence in the area of footwear: Roman shoes are mainly imitations of Greek models.

Postilion’s boot also called, “seven league boot”

Weight: 4.5 kg. France, end of the 17th century

International Shoe Museum, Romans

Byzantine civilization extended from the 5th to the 15th century, producing throughout this period a wealth of crimson leather shoes trimmed in gold reminiscent of embroidered Persian-style boots, as well as the Roman soccus and mulleus.

Byzantine mules and slippers were objects of luxury and refinement initially reserved for the Emperor and his court.

Shoe of the Marchioness of Pompadour (1721–1764)

International Shoe Museum, Romans, deposit of the Musée National du Moyen Age, Thermes de Cluny, Paris

Crimson or gold slippers were worn in the eastern Mediterranean basin, in particular in the area around Alexandria and in the Nile valley. Excavations at Achmin have yielded many examples that belonged to women. The arrival of Christian shoemakers in this region revived the craft of shoemaking, as Christian symbols were added to the geometric decorative tradition.

Woman’s mule

France, c. 1789

Guillen Collection, International Shoe Museum, Romans

A silver sandal discovered in an Egyptian tomb and now in the collection of the Bally Museum is a good example. Dating to the 6th century AD, it is embellished with the image of a dove symbolizing Christ.

As the Middle Ages dawned in the West, footwear remained under the influence of ancient Roman models. The Franks wore shoes equipped with straps that rose to mid-thigh height. Only their leaders wore shoes with pointed tips.

Shoe of Marie-Antoinette collected on the 10th August 1792

Carnavalet Museum, Paris

Thanks to the extraordinary degree of preservation of certain burials, we have an idea of what Merovingian shoes looked like. The tomb of Queen Arégonde, wife of King Clotaire I (497–561), discovered at Saint-Denis has enabled us to reconstruct an image of her shoes as made up of supple leather sandals with straps intertwining the leg.

Embroided mules

France, early 18th century

Elsewhere, gilded bronze shoe buckles decorated with stylized animals discovered in a leader’s tomb at Hordaim, are proof of the attention given to shoe ornamentation during this period. Shoes were very costly during the Middle Ages, which is why they appear in wills and are among the donations made to monasteries.

Woman’s shoe

Toe upturned in the eastern style

Louis XV period, France, 18th century

International Shoe Museum, Romans, deposit of the Musée National du Moyen Age, Thermes de Cluny, Paris

Expense also explains why a fiancé would offer his future wife a pair of embroidered shoes before marriage, a lovely tradition dating to Gregory of Tours (538–594). The strapped or banded shoe continued into the Carolingian period, although the woman’s model became more embellished. As for the wooden-soled gallique or galoche, it too remained in use.

Woman’s shoe

England, 18th century

Guillen Collection, International Shoe Museum, Romans

From this time forward, soldiers protected their legs with leather or metal leggings called “bamberges”. In the 9th century, a shoe called the heuse made out of supple leather extending high on the leg announced the arrival of the boot.

Emperor Charlemagne wore simple boots with straps intertwining the legs, although for ceremonies he wore laced boots decorated with precious stones.

Carved, lacquered and painted wooden clogs

Louis XVI period, France, 18th century

International Shoe Museum, Romans, deposit of the Musée National du Moyen Age, Thermes de Cluny, Paris

But frequent contact between France and Italy helped develop a taste for regalia and increasingly the shoe became an object of great luxury. At the same time, religious councils were ordering clerics to wear liturgical shoes while performing mass. Called sandals, these holy shoes were of cloth and completely covered the cleric’s foot.

Clogs typical of the Bethmale Valley, Ariège

Gift from a fiancé to a younger woman; apparently the higher the toe the stronger the love

18th century

Rural Museum of Popular Arts, Laduz, Yonne

Regarding shoemaking, the French word cordouanier (which became cordonnier or shoemaker) was adopted in the 11th century and signified someone who worked with Cordoba leather and by extension, all kinds of leather. As in Antiquity, shoes were patterned separately for the right and left foot.

Clog-shaped snuffbox

Rural Museum of Popular Arts, Laduz

Shoes made out of Cordoba leather were reserved for the aristocracy, whereas those made by çavetiers, or cobblers (shoe repairmen) were more crudely fashioned. The wearing of shoes began to expand in the 11th century. The most common medieval type was an open shoe secured by a strap fitted with a buckle or button.