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| 1720-50; The Met |
Today I’m giving my presentation on hats, but my heart belongs to shoes. 🙂 It’s Saint Patrick’s Day, so how about celebrating with a look at green shoes throughout history:
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| 1690-1720; Shoe Icons |
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| 1760-75; |
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| 1760s; The Met |
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| 1790s; The Met |
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| 1810s; The Met |
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| Side-lace boot – GREEN! – The Met, 1830 |
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| 1880s-90s, Shoe Icons |
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| 1912-15; Shoe Icons. That is a leprechaun-ette’s shoe if ever I saw one. |
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| 1920s, Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| 1930, Philadelphia Museum of Art |
I hope you all have a great St. Patrick’s Day, and eat lots of corned beef. NOM
8 Comments
ZipZip
March 17, 2012 at 9:55 PMThese are fantastic! The 1760-1775 green velvet shoes with the gold buckles are my favorites of the lot. Subtle.
MrsC (Maryanne)
March 17, 2012 at 10:39 PMCorned beef! Yum!! I've got to go make some now! In green shoes, to be sure to be sure!
Megan
March 18, 2012 at 3:42 AMI just noticed that all the shoes, aside from flats and one of the pairs from the 20th Century, have a short heel. If I remember correctly, women's heels were short not due to fashion or not wanting a high heel, but because higher heels (and stillettos) require steel and other manufacturing materials for women's shoe fashion that wasn't highly utilized until later. Am I incorrect?
Lauren R
March 20, 2012 at 4:43 AMMegan, you are absolutely right. The steel shank used in stilettos did not come along until the 1950s. Before that time, heels were made of wood or stacked leather. We don't have much of a concept today of "breaking" a heel, but it could and did happen in the past, particularly in the the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, when heels were getting higher but were still made out of wood. There are some great ads in the old Sears catalogs from the early '30s advertising "spike heels," what we would think would be a thin heel of 5 or 6 inches these days, but it was only 2.5 inches, just much narrower than the typical cuban heels of the time.
Anonymous
March 18, 2012 at 12:55 PMI have a pair of green shoes that I wore in honor of the occasion. Super cute but terribly hard on the feet!
Lauren R
March 20, 2012 at 4:44 AMI have a pair of green 1920s mary janes, but I can't get my feet into them, lol! I wore red shoes for St. Paddy's, lol.
Magdalen Aithne Arkright
March 18, 2012 at 3:46 PMI love those! I wish I had green shoes!
textilehistorIE
March 19, 2012 at 4:21 PMBrilliant! I think my favourites are the 1810s!