Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers

Citation

Barnes, L. (2007), "Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers", Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, Vol. 11 No. 4, pp. 622-623. https://doi.org/10.1108/13612020710824643

This book opens with a quote from the most famous shoe lover in the world, Imelda Marcos, and it is indeed a lexicon for any true shoe enthusiast. However this book also provides a comprehensive and erudite text on all aspects of shoes, from the meaning of the shoe through to shoes and sexuality. The text draws on global examples including chapters based on perspectives relating to shoes from Italy, Japan, China and Africa, and covers perspectives such as history, fashion, culture and identity. Throughout, the text is sumptuously illustrated with beautiful drawings and photographs.

The book takes the reader on a journey through a series of “steps”, starting with the history of the shoe from ancient Greece through to the twentieth century. It is argued that the shoe had significant symbolic meaning in ancient Greek culture, providing a symbol of gender identification, and more significantly providing representation of a “journey”, for example through the ritualistic role of the shoe in wedding preparations representing the bride's journey from one household to another.

The meaning of the shoe in terms of fashion and functionality is traced through history from medieval Italy, through the Venetian Renaissance and into eighteenth century London and Paris as shoes became fashion items more widely associated with gender, status and wealth as increasing styles, fabrics and forms were introduced. These chapters address how changes in culture and society contributed to the separation between shoes worn by the genders, with men adopting more functional footwear and women increasingly opting for form over function.

Around the turn of the twentieth century the link between healthy feet and footwear was given more attention. Functionality of footwear is dealt with in this section, with particular focus on the role of the shoe (or boot) in military footwear. It is of particular relevance that the fist world war is given some focus with the woeful functionality of the military boot of this era causing many soldiers to be sent home with “trench foot”, a condition caused by the failure of the rubber boots to allow the foot to breathe.

A global cultural perspective of footwear is taken in the second “step” of the text, with perspectives from Japan, Africa and China. It is argued that in Japanese culture the shoe represents material culture with close religious links. At the turn of the twentieth century, footwear in Africa also had strong cultural meanings, where the “English” shoe came to represent social status but also, it is argued, oppression. The chapter focusing on shoes in China details the symbolic meaning of footwear in Chinese culture, including geographic and regional divisions as well as the importance of the fashion shoe providing a representation of a modern China.

The third step “Shoes, bodies and identities” takes a more personalised view of shoes. Christopher Breward discusses the role of the shoe in “fashioning masculinity” and argues that the male shoe has maintained a largely functional role, somewhat immune to the influences of “fashion”. Further chapters in this section go on to embrace the notion of footwear and femininity with a history of high heels and the female form as well as perspectives of the role of footwear in sexuality, eroticism and fetishism.

The final “Representation and self‐presentation” step provides a detailed account of one of the most famous shoe designers in the world, Salvatore Ferragamo, including an argument that Italy is the centre of excellence for shoe manufacture as a result of its talent for design and footwear production skills. Further modern perspectives of shoes are discussed, including shoes as forms of art and the modern consumption of shoes with a focus on the “sneaker” as a symbol of global shoe manufacture and a modern symbol of affluence, youth and social mobility.

This book provides a comprehensive chronicle of the shoe that is suitable for academics from a variety of backgrounds including fashion marketing and fashion theory. It links the shoe to fashion through its social and political context, and provides an interesting account of how the ebb and flow of fashion has penetrated this once functional and symbolic article of clothing. Of particular interest to academics in the field of fashion is the discussion of the nature and challenges of mass production of footwear in the fashion industry.

The key strengths of this book lie in its depth of coverage of the history of the shoe and the accompanying imagery throughout the book that contribute to the beautifully presented text. However, herein lies its weakness, since the sheer size of the book makes it bulky and heavy, so it can be difficult to navigate through the text, particularly with the heavy reliance on footnotes.

This text provides a very comprehensive manuscript for anyone studying shoes in an academic context if at times the language of the text is heavy in parts and is perhaps more suited to scholars from a culture, sociology or fashion theory background rather than management or marketing.