Shoes may come in so many models, materials, colors and trends. You have such a large variety to choose from. It seems easy, but when you think that we take for granted their existence in our lives, no wonder we never think about when the first form of shoe or something that had little resemblance with what we nowadays call “shoes” appeared.

Shoes and their historyBy: Rodica

Egyptians were among the first ones to cover their feet with a simple piece of grass or plaited papyrus which was strapped to the feet. Those were the sandals in their ancient form, and they were showing social rang of the wearer. The slaves were walking barefoot or with palm tree made sandals. Common citizens wore sandals of woven papyrus, but sandals with pointed toes were reserved only for the high society, and the colors red and yellow were taboo for anyone below the aristocratic rank.

It is obvious that shoes were made for the protection of feet but aside from their actual purpose, shoes can help to tell the story of the person who wore them. Shoes can help tell the economic and social status, values, and styles of the owner. By looking at a pair of shoes one can see that they reflect the personality of the person who wears them. Shoes also show character by showing how the individual reacts to fashion. In addition, one can tell whether the wearer of the shoes and the shoes themselves are in style by looking at the quality of the materials that the shoes are made from.

Leaving the Egyptians building the Pyramids undisturbed let’s travel to the old Europe and take a look in the Ancient Greece to see what happened with the shoe “industry” there and what were the latest trends. In that time the aristocratic women owned as many as twenty pairs of shoes, with a style to match every occasion. Slaves were employed solely to carry a supply of their lady's shoes when she left home, assuring

that she would wear appropriately shoes during her travels. This makes me feel like I urgently need a time machine as it sounds too good to be true.

But before the time machine I need to check more continents with their own particular shoe magical entry. In Asia, more precisely in China it was common to bind women's feet to keep them small.

This century old practice owed little to aesthetics, instead bound feet were thought to insure faithfulness, since with such deformed feet the wife would find it difficult to travel very far on her own.

To be honest I prefer the Middle Ages when the sandals gave way to a more protective type of shoe, the sabot. This shoe cut roughly from a single piece of wood, was the predominant footwear of the European peasant. That surely reminds me of Holland and tulips. In Japan, wooden shoes 8-10 cm heels have been worn for centuries.

So far so good, but we are missing something…Mais oui, la France with their “je ne sais quoi” was where the pointed shoes originated, reportedly the invention of a Count of Anjou who wished to hide his deformed feet.

In the sixteenth century, aristocratic French women began wearing so highheeled

shoes that the wearer was literally standing on her toes when she wore them. Later, wooden platform shoes became the rage in Venice. Of course Italy couldn’t be less in terms of fashion and the heels eventually became so high that women could not walk in them, and servants were hired to help the ladies in and out of their gondolas.

Believe it or not high heels were proscribed by law, because of the high death-rate resulting from ladies of the night tripping and falling to their deaths.

In England Henry VIII initiated the vogue for wide-tied shoes, presumably to hide his gout-swollen feet. Shoes soon grew to such widths that Parliament passed a law limiting the width of a shoe to 15 cm.

Cruel times for feet laid ahead as it wasn't until the invention in 1818 of the left shoe last and the right-shoe last that the left shoe was constructed differently from the right shoe. In case you forgot, humans are not symmetrical and the right foot is different in shape and size from the left one.

As the things moved fast in that period, by 1900, most footwear was being made, at least in part, by machine. And the rest is history...shoe history.

PS: Just to mention a Guinness Book fact: the largest pair of shoes ever made was a colossal size 55, built for a Florida giant named Harley Davidson.

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