The Evolution of Shoes
The contemporary times expanded how shoes evolve to almost all styles and designs. Much of that innovation has been captured in Mary Trasko’s book Heavenly Soles: Extraordinary Twentieth-Century Shoes. It comes as a richly illustrated chronicle of outstanding shoes and the people who made and wore them. While the focus is on high fashion and the twentieth century, Trasko does explore the history of female footwear and the fact that “for centuries women’s feet and their coverings have held an oddly exalted position.” Historically, the exalted position has almost always been a sexual one: Witness Chinese footbinding, which Chinese men found “deliriously erotic,” the Western preoccupation with small female feet, and the crippling styles that continue to deform feet to this day. Trasko also discusses foot fetishism, which turns the fashionably erotic into what looks, at least, much more sinister. One fetish shoe, dating back to 1900, is a Victorian-style