Title:
Shoes : a history from sandals to sneakers
Author:
McNeil, Peter.
ISBN:
9780857850386
Edition:
Paperback ed.
Publication Information:
London : Berg, 2011.
Physical Description:
439 pages : color illustrations ; 24 cm
General Note:
Originally published in hardback 2006.
Contents:
Preface -- Introduction: Long walk: shoes, people and places / Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeil -- Step 1: Foot In The Past: -- 1: Beneath their shining feet: shoes and sandals in classical Greece / Sue Blundell -- 2: Sumptuous shoes: making and wearing in medieval Italy / Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli -- 3: Courtly lady or courtesan? The Venetian chopine in the Renaissance / Andrea Vianello -- 4: Walking the streets of London and Paris in the Enlightenment / Peter McNeil and Giorgio Riello -- 5: War Wellingtons: military footwear in the Age of Empire / Alison Matthews David -- 6: Perils of choice: women's footwear in nineteenth-century America / Nancy Rexford -- Step 2: Encounters And Cultural Interactions: -- 7: Purity, pollution and place in traditional Japanese footwear / Martha Chaiklin -- 8: Interrogating Africa's past: footwear amongst the Yoruba / Tunde M Akinwumi -- 9: Dream of butterflies? Shoes in Chinese culture / Paola Zamperini -- Step 3: Shoes, Bodies And Identities: -- 10: Fashioning masculinity: men's footwear and modernity / Christopher Breward -- 11: Delicate balance: women, power and high heels / Elizabeth Semmelhack -- 12: Shoes and the erotic imagination / Valerie Steele -- 13: Sex and sin: the magic of red shoes / Hilary Davidson -- 14: Beyond the rainbow: queer shoes / Clare Lomas, Peter McNeil and Sally Gray -- Step 4: Representation And Self-Presentation: -- 15: Made in Italy: Ferragamo and twentieth-century fashion / Stefania Ricci -- 16: Style through design: form and function / Giovanni Luigi Fontana -- 17: Sole representation: shoe imagery and twentieth-century art / Julia Pine -- 18: Limousines for the feet: the rhetoric of sneakers / Alison Gill -- 19: Male Cinderella: shoes, genius and fantasy / Peter McNeil and Giorgio Riello -- Notes -- Glossary -- Contributors -- Bibliography -- Index.
Abstract:
Overview: From practical wardrobe accessories to objects of desire, this book is a stunning visual and fascinating historical reference exploring every aspect of shoes. From ancient times to the present, shoes have been so much more than things to walk in. We use them to signal how fashionable we are, but beyond style, shoes can communicate our sexual desires, aesthetic sense, social status, and personality. Within the pages of this lavishly illustrated book, you'll find the cultural mixed with the practical as the story of shoes unfolds from the foot-binding shoes of China to the infamous twenty-three-inch chopine platform shoe to the mens' shoes worn by dandies of the eighteenth century to the move toward conservatism that brought the Wellington boot to the irresistible sex appeal of the high heel to the cult rise of the sneaker. Shoes is a revealing, insightful, and beautifully presented fashion history collection.
Genre: