Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers - Softcover

3.88

8 ratings by Goodreads

9780857850386: Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0857850385 ISBN 13: 9780857850386

Publisher: Berg Publishers, 2011

What do your shoes say about you? Shoes are now much more than just things to walk in. From kids on the block to models on the catwalk, we use them to signal how fashionable we are. But, beyond style, this most intimate object communicates much more . . . our sexual desires, aesthetic sense, social status and personality. And, before they became supreme objects of desire, shoes had a history. From ancient times to the present, shoes have had a cultural as well as a practical purpose. Within these pages is pretty much everything you ever wanted to know about shoes - the tiny crushing shoes of China, the infamous chopine with its 23-inch heel, how dandies made men's shoes beautiful in the eighteenth century, and how the powers of conservatism made them dull again, war and the Wellington boot, sex and the high heel, the codes of the "gay shoe," shoes in fairytales and in art, the irresistible rise of the sneaker, and the cult of shoe designers.

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Review:

At last a work that deals not only with the history of footwear, but also with its cultural significance. This volume helps transform the shoe from a mundane object of everyday use into something of great social and psychological power. * MANOLO BLAHNIK * Anyone who has ever spent the rent on a pair of impossibly high stilettos, has bought shoes that don't fit, or owns shoes they have never worn, will want to get their hands on this beautiful coffee-table tome. * The Times Magazine * All of them [the contributors] are engagingly passionate about their particular footwear niche. ... Erotic Connections are everywhere in this book. ... Hardly a stone is left unturned - or unillustrated - in this department. * The Times * 'Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers' is footwear for thought. This lavishly illustrated collection of essays presents a global history of the humble (and not so humble) shoe as a symbol of style, status, sexuality and desire, from ancient times to the present day. * The Remix - supplement to the New York Times * An exceptionally beautiful and wide-ranging history of footwear. * The Observer * [Shoes] is lavishly ... illustrated, and the pages of text are colour-coordinated with the pics, as good accessories should be. * The Evening Standard * Charting their history, 'Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers, takes a peak at some of the best. Stilettos, wellies, sneakers and boots - they're all included and put in their cultural, historical, political and social contexts, each foot fashion is explained in detail alongside beautifully executed illustrations and photographs. * Dazed and Confused * With hundreds of stunning photographs, Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers traces the importance of just about every kind of footwear to reveal how fashion has changed over the years. * Zoom Fashion Portal * [The work] exemplifies the capacity to integrate historical enquiry, empirical investigation, hermeneutical theorizing, and a sense of delight in scholarship * Cultural Sociology * If you have ever wondered why women are forever in search of, consumed by, in love with, transformed by `The Perfect Shoe': wonder no longer. Simply read this history of shoes. Then go out and buy some more. * STUART WEITZMAN * ... moves the shoe definitively from the margins of `accessory' to the centre of fashion. Long gone are the days of `having the shoes to match the bag'; this coherent survey of the shoe in all its aspects - historical, cultural and global - reveals footwear as a key to the vicissitudes of fashion and iconic in itself. * ELIZABETH WILSON * The book tells not only of the history of the shoe industry, but also its cultural significance. 210 colour illustrations and expert authors make this a "coffee table book" of the highest calibre. * BuchMarkt *

About the Author:

Giorgio Riello is Associate Professor in Global History and Culture at the University of Warwick. He has widely published on fashion, textiles, product innovation and design in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and is the author of A Foot in the Past (2006) and co-editor of several volumes including The Fashion History Reader: Global Perspectives (2010 with P. McNeil). Peter McNeil is Professor of Design History in the School of Design at the University of Technology, Sydney and Foundation Professor of Fashion Studies at Stockholm University. Recent publications include The Fashion History Reader: Global Perspectives, and Fashion: Critical and Primary Sources, Renaissance to the Present Day (4 Vols. Berg, 2009).

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