I really cannot find the right words to describe just how wonderful this exhibit was, so I'll just write about what remember in a stream-of-consciousness way. This exhibit has to be among my favorite museum visits, alongside the Dutch Masters in the Rijkmuseum in Amsterdam and the French Impressionists in the Louvre. I do not know if the exhibit is going to travel to other locations.
It was probably 80% women’s shoes and 20% men's. Mostly fashion
shoes, just a few sporty ones. All in extremely good condition so were
owned by the wealthy and not worn a lot, or were showroom samples.
A pair of Elton John’s black tall boots with huge multicolored sparkly platforms. Boots that could have been worn by Mike Myers in the Austin Powers movies. Blue boots modeled by Naomi Campbell that are
impossible to describe (pic below). Gorgeous evening dress shoes from the 40’s/50’s made by a Haverhill, Mass manufacturer that was world renown in the first half of the 20th century. Keds cloth tennis boots from the 1920s…lace up with a lovely heel. A display of all the pieces that go into making Laboutin pumps. Designer shoes from many decades… Laboutin, Chanel, Blanik, Ferregamo, YSL, Courreges, Stella McCartney, Mary Quant, etc….. Antique shoes from all over the world. Quite a few gorgeous embroidered tiny silk shoes from China from the days when upper class women bound their feet. Very basic men’s boots that were several hundred years old. Wedding shoes from India that were a platform of silver with a toe ball on platforms about 4” tall and tiny bells so you could hear the wearer approaching. Shoes worn in public baths by wealthy women at the height of the ottoman empire, with impossibly high platforms to keep their feet off the yucky floor. Some of the shoes had descriptions that said they wearer would not have been able to walk in them without help. Shoes that looked like you could not possibly even put them on your feet except while sitting down. A section titled “seduction” with some truly outrageous footwear and posed photos of models wearing them. I was mesmerized by a short video showing a young woman hand making a pair of simple leather men’s oxfords. Displays about and samples from private collections, including a Boston area theatrical designer who started his collection of many hundereds of shoes from the 20s, 30s 40s just because he thought they were works or art, the real collection of a real estate broker who lives in an upscale Boston suburb, and the shoes of Iris Apfel. Shoe lasts for famous people including Princess Diana.
..and much much more.
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