SHODDY BEHAVIOUR: A BRIEF HISTORY OF SHOES

You might well borrow your mate’s underpants (freshly laundered!) or even his jockstrap (definitely freshly laundered), a shirt or tie. But you never step into his shoes. This is because there is a deep intimacy between a man and his shoes that makes them so personal that, for anyone else to wear them, would seem almost like a physical – even, perhaps, sexual – violation.

What creates that intimacy? Certainly, the fact that shoes are the only things in our wardrobe that take on the shape of our body, with our feet forming them to make them comfortable, despite bunions, deformed toes or whatever. A shirt, for example, always remains aloof from our bodies, bouncing back to its shape, not ours, after every laundering. The same is true of our underwear and all our outer garments. Only our shoes become a real part of us, to such an extent that, even if we did lend them to someone, they would be uncomfortable and alien to their feet – and no two pairs of feet are identical. 

It all goes back a long way. In fact, to the days when roads were rocky, woods were damp and even fields had surfaces that could damage the soles of the feet. As our ancestors needed their feet more than many other parts of the body – to walk long distances in search of food, or a safe haven for family and domestic animals; and to use as a weapon if all else failed – it was essential, even in very early peoples, that these feet should be well shod. 

And any and every material was chosen to encase them in the protective layer that eventually became the modern shoe: flax, large leaves, tree bark, animal skins, feathers and fur were all bound around feet and ankles to make walking, running and hunting possible, unencumbered and easeful. But that was only half the battle. The need for a firm base for the shoes was responsible for the move to treat the sole of a shoe and its upper in different ways. The sole needed tough, well-cured animal hide, the thicker the better. The upper could be of the same or something malleable and less heavy. 

In hot countries, the sole was made of straw, hemp or flax, often pleated together into rope – the earliest precursors of espadrilles, the staple footwear for peasants in the Mediterranean and Far Eastern civilizations. But the modern shoe was a construction of leather that, until the 18^th century, was cured by steeping in urine – human even more than animal – and was made on a simple last to be crudely joined to an upper by iron nails, from which the expression “hobnail boot” comes. And that was the basis for the shoes and boots that have been worn for the past 300 years by men (and women) in the West – with a couple of comparatively late technical additions. 

Even as late as the mid-19^th century, most footwear in Europe was made in broad size categories (with the precision of, say, size 10½ not coming into use for cheap shoes until after World War I), basically small or large if bought off the peg, although most villages had a shoemaker who, using a paper or cardboard template, could get most sizes reasonably well fitting because the boots were made for an individual who had been measured – at least roughly. The other technical innovation that made shoes better fitting was the realisation that everyone’s left and right feet are a different size and shape and that the traditional straight shape was comfortable for neither. 

If this all seems a long way in spirit from today’s cheap and usually easily replaced “fashion shoes” for men and women, that is because it is. A pair of working boots or shoes for most members of the working class, the military and the worker in heavy industry were meant to last. They were regularly cleaned and polished (sometimes daily); if they had been wet, they were stuffed with newspaper and dried – but away from a fire or strong heat that would crack the leather; and they were, as and when funds provided, serviced at the bootmaker’s, not only because to be down-at-heel was a social shame but also because shoes meant that a man could go to work. No wonder so many men at the lower end of society slept with their boots on – in communal lodgings, terrified that somebody would steal them so that their rightful owner could not go and look for work in the days when almost all work was casual labour, hired on a daily basis. 

Such terrors are gone for all but the derelict now and, in fact, tough, strongly made leather shoes are also disappearing for many of us. Not only do they cost much more than shoes or boots made with more modern techniques and materials, they are also frequently too heavy for those of us used to wearing sneakers, lightweight deck shoes and running shoes. And, whereas for centuries shoes were normally made from locally sourced materials, today any and everything is available in virtually every country in the world. 

Now the shoe is a fashion item, instead of the utilitarian necessity it has been for most of its life, although there have been exceptions. There was nothing pedestrian – and the derivation of the word is interesting to the shoe historian – in the gold embroidered court shoes with scarlet high heels worn by Louis XIV; Beau Brummell’s fine leather boots – reputedly polished daily with champagne; or the patent leather pumps worn for very grand occasions, including attendance at court, but never seen on the streets or in the daytime. 

And it is these fashion shoes that, with the exception of Dr Martens and Caterpillar work boots, are the precursors of the shoes we all wear today, from the heel-less Tod’s driving shoe to the many different types of sports shoe that, although frequently designed for a specific sport, are generally worn on the streets, especially by children and teenagers – or those older, who think like them. Certainly, since Charles Goodyear invented the vulcanisation of rubber in the late 19^th century, this is a sector of the shoe market that has grown unbelievably: as long ago as 1957, 600m pairs of sports shoes were sold in a year. 

As life becomes increasingly less formal, and endorsements by sportsmen are promoted with billion-dollar campaigns, things have come a long way for casual, all-purpose, all-occasion sports shoes. Sneakers are now acceptable with a business suit and trainers have even been worn on red carpets. Not that sports shoes have had any radical makeovers and new design approaches. In fact, most changes are cosmetic; but that does not stop first-day-of-issue shoes generating queues right around the block in major cities across the globe. 

It is true to say that never have so many been shod so cheaply and comfortably and, at least to the customer’s satisfaction, as fashionably as they are today. 

by Colin McDowell