Elaborate Shoes Not Always Prerogative Of the Fair Sex

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27027, 11 March 1949, Page 2

Elaborate Shoes Not Always Prerogative Of the Fair Sex

NOTES FOR WOMEN

From the simple sandals of the ancient Greeks to present-day styles, fashions in footwear have undergone many strange and wonderful changes, writes D. J. Beeman in an Australian newspaper.

The Romans wore boots—shining black boots, adorned with silver and ivory, and white leather boots laced with coloured silks for the Beau Brummels of that day—a reminder that women have been by no means always leaders of fashion where footwear is concerned.

In spite of the oft-repeated accusation that women’s shoes are ridiculous, what of those futile, heel-less slippers worn by the Turks, and the outrageous “ Crackowes ” of the Middle Ages, when men wore shoes with toes so long they had to be fastened to the knees with silver chains? Nor were the latter just a passing exaggeration of a more sensible style, for, despite violent ecclesiastical opposition, the fashion lasted for a considerable period. Possibly the very violence of the opposition aroused an equal determination to wear them.

Montezuma, the King of Mexico, wore sandals ornamented with pearls and a green stone called chalchivite. When Alexander the Great invaded India, he received submission from a king who wore “ sandals of gold set with precious stones.” In Queen Mary’s reign, fashion, as is so often its wont, swung from one extreme to the other, and where shoes had been overlong they now became absurdly wide. She ended it by proclaiming that the toe expansion be restricted to six inches. At least they couldn’t have been troubled with corns and bunions in those days! Baulked of extravagance in length and breadth, fashion found the ever-

open door and introduced extraordinarily high heels. So much for rules and regulations. Queen Elizabeth introduced high heels for women, and at hgr Court were worn shoes known as chopines. They were of lovely silks and satins, gold embroidered and laced with coloured silk cords, worn over a cork sole which was sometimes 18 inches high. Shakespeare mentions thg chopine in Hamlet. The wide-cuffed, extravagant boots of the reign of Charles I are well known from paintings of long-dead cavaliers. ■ It was Charles who introduced the high heels of red which were the mark of the aristocrat of that period.

It was during the 18th century that shoes reached their highest in England, and women tottered along assisted by a couple of attendants to save them biting the dust at every step.

But ’twas ever thus, and fashion is rarely ruled by comfort. It is an eternal cycle, and the newest innovations are but echoes of the past, so that in our ultra-smart, “very latest ’ platform-soled shoes of to-day we see the phantom of the chopine of Good Queen Bess’ days.