In the early 17th century, shoelaces appeared as one of the most popular embellishments.
The remains of Native American shoes were discovered in Missouri in 8000 BC.
In 3300 BC, an ice merchant died in the mountains of France, leaving behind a pair of primitive straw-woven shoes.
Oil paintings of shoes or shoemakers can be found in Egyptian temples from 3000 BC.
In 100 AD, barefoot was the most fundamental difference between the clothing of Greek slaves and free people.
In 200 AD, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius declared that no one except him and his heirs would be allowed to wear red sandals.
In the 15th century, knights all wore shoes with long toes (24 inches long). The law that always promoted frugality clearly stipulated the length of the toe.
In the early 16th century, under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci, high heels were invented.
In the mid-16th century, 30-inch high heels became popular throughout southern Europe.
In the early 17th century, shoelaces appeared as one of the most popular embellishments.
Due to mistranslation at the end of the 17th century, Cinderella's velvet slippers in the French fairy tale became Cinderella's glass slippers.
In the mid-18th century, it took nearly a hundred years to finally replace the traditional shoemaking method and the first shoe factory appeared. Soon, the first shoe store appeared in Boston.
In the early 19th century, flat shoes and Greek beach shoes were very popular.
The first pair of sports shoes (also called rubber-soled canvas shoes) appeared in the mid-19th century. Later, Elias and Howe invented the first sewing machine.
At the end of the 19th century, buttons, an indispensable decoration for clothing, were also used in shoes and soon became a fashion standard.
Before this century, shoemaking was a lowly trade, like carpenters, blacksmiths and tailors. Shoe design is not considered an independent, artistic work, but is regarded as part of the entire shoemaking process.
Famous shoe designers mainly emerged in Europe, because in the United States, with the rapid development of mass production of modern shoes, individual shoemakers became redundant. The American shoe industry originated in the New England colonies, where farmers made their own shoes in their kitchens during the winter. The whole family is involved in this effort. Men cut the leather and attach the soles, while women sew the hems. The workbench used by colonial shoemakers is now a collector's item. As they mastered the skills of shoemaking, some courageous farmers opened small shoe workshops. Three or four workers worked together to assemble shoe materials sewn by local shoemakers, sole them, and then make finished shoes.
In 1750, a shoemaking factory was built in Lean, Massachusetts, which further developed local shoemaking technology. There, workers no longer make shoes independently. Each step of making shoes is handled by a trained person. The production line begins to take shape. At first, shoes were still made to order, but in order to keep workers occupied during the off-season, shoe shop owners began to make shoes without reservations. These shoes are called shoes for sale and are displayed in the windows of local shops. In the early days, the Harvey brothers loaded their shoes for sale in a horse-drawn carriage and went to nearby places to sell them.
In 1793, they opened the first shoe retail store in Boston, selling finished shoes every Wednesday and Saturday. Since the mid-eighteenth century, inventors had been working on improving sewing machines. It was not until 1790 that the first sewing machine specifically used for leather processing was modified by an Englishman named Thomas Saint. It's pretty much just an awl that points straight up to punch holes in the leather. Sir Mark Brownler of England was the chief engineer of New York Harbor. He invented a press that could use metal needles to sew the uppers and soles together. In order to fulfill his duty in the British anti-Napoleonic war, Brownler produced 400 pairs of shoes a day with the help of disabled soldiers. After the war, the British shoemaking industry returned to manual operations.
In 1810, a similar machine appeared in the United States. At the same time, two Frenchmen named Jingguebler and Jollier were also building such machines in Paris. A shoemaker named Bresi from Stuttgart, Germany, tried to use screws to connect the upper and sole. In 1829, a man named Nathaniel Leonardo in Merrimack, Massachusetts, USA, finally perfected the shoe nail machine.
Around 1812, Thomas Blanchard of Sandton, Massachusetts, converted a lathe used for making gun stocks into a machine used to carve shoe lasts. The shoe last was a wooden mold made into a shoe shape. It was assembled on top of it. In the 1830s, still in New England, shoemakers began cutting shoe uppers with the help of molds rather than relying on individual cutting skills. In the 1840s, rolling machines were used in leather compression to facilitate the formation of the upper and heel reinforcements. The British continued to make shoes by hand until the end of the 19th century, when they were forced to switch to machine production due to economic needs. Only then did they discover that all patent rights belonged to Americans, and they had to rent American machines and pay royalties. But this also allows England to retain a strong tradition of hand-made shoes.
In 1846, Ellis Howey of Spencer, Massachusetts patented a sewing machine. This machine can not only sew cloth, but also sew leather with waxed thread. Three years later, American inventor Ishaq M. Singer invented a sewing machine with a pedal in Boston.
In 1858, Leman B. Black invented a machine that could sew the soles and uppers together. Two years later, a gentleman named Mike perfected the machine. In the next 21 years, Blake and Mike jointly monopolized the machine-made shoe industry. In Italy, the tradition of handmade shoes continued into the twentieth century, while in France, the design of custom shoes was closely integrated with the small-scale fashion industry that produced them. The fashion industry in Paris was founded by an Englishman named Charles Frederick Wuss. In 1858, he opened a fashion store at 7 Avenue de La Pace in Paris. He was the first to launch a batch of clothing every season and ask young girls to serve as models. As the first person to rise in the fashion industry, he was also the first to establish a system for designing clothing. The designed clothing could be mass-produced in factories in Paris and sold all over the world. His first big opportunity came when Princess Pauline de Metrich, wife of the Austrian Ambassador to France, wore one of his clothes to attend a court ball held by Napoleon III. Soon Napoleon III's wife, Empress Josephine, and other ladies at court began to wear Wusse's clothes. He designed the luxurious petticoat of the Second Empire with a padded back, making it the standard garment for women in the 1870s and 1880s. Wusse dominated sartorial taste and before his death in 1895, he was making clothes for all the royal families of Europe. Some garments were secretly sent to Queen Victoria's court without labels. After Wusse's death, the business was taken over by his two sons, Gaston and Jean-Philippe. They soon realized that fashion was changing rapidly, and in 1900, in order to keep up with changing fashion tastes, they invited designer Paul Boles, who was only 21 years old at the time. Boles' avant-garde clothing soon appeared on the celebrities and dignitaries of the day. After four years with the Wus Brothers, he left them to start a new business. At that time, a number of other fashion houses - Paquet, Cherout, Dauchet - also sprung up around the Woos Brothers store and on the adjacent Place Vend?me, and Paris became the world's leading fashion house. center of industry. Most shoemakers worked in obscurity for fashion houses, but a few began to become well-known shoe designers.
Fashionable women wearing Boles or Paquet must be wearing shoes designed by Chabali on the Via Lischerry or Ferry on the Via De La Gourenghi Bartlier. Pilot of Paradis-Bosenler Street is the most fashionable of these designers. He was born in 1817, the son of a country shoemaker, and learned the shoemaking technology from his father. In 1855, he arrived in Paris and made a name for himself among fashion industry buyers with the Woos Brothers, mainly due to the heel he designed, which was thinner and straighter than the popular Louis heels at the time. After Pillet retired, his son took over the business. Until World War II, Pillet's shoes were known for their elegance.
While Pillet's shoe stores in London and Paris were attracting thousands of customers, another famous shoe designer who started working in Paris during the First World War only won 20 customers. His name is Pito Yantni, and he calls himself "the most expensive designer in the world." This ensures that he has an exclusive customer base. His shoes are now on display at the New York City Museum of Art. After Yantney, Andre Peruggi is another young designer from Les.
He learned his shoemaking skills from his Italian father. Peruggi was brought to Paris by Paulet and worked in many fashion companies. Two thousand of the shoes he designed are now on display at the De La Chauxu Museum in Norman, France.
Salvador Ferragamo, a young Italian shoemaker, immigrated to Boston in 1914 and brought the skill of handmade women's shoes back to the United States. Disillusioned with the machine-made shoemaking methods in the United States, he moved to California and became a prop maker while also handmaking shoes for people in the film industry. Soon movie stars were buying his shoes. After he returned to Italy in 1927, the stars remained his loyal customers. In the 1930s, he developed shoes with cork soles, which were popular for more than ten years. After his death, his masterpieces were exhibited around the world.
In the 1940s, a young British man named David Evans came to the West Coast of the United States after Ferragamo and became a shoe designer for Hollywood stars. He also designed shoes for some of New York's most famous fashion designers, including Bill Blass and Oscar de la Renta. Meanwhile, the legendary Roger Ver went to Paris to work for Christian Dell, where he became famous for designing stiletto-heeled women's shoes. His creative works are sought after by art museums around the world.
Now a new generation of shoe designers has emerged in Europe and the United States. Although no museum has paid attention to them yet, their works have been favored by customers and fashion designers. Marlo Blahnik, Joan Halpern, Maude Freejean, Bass and Hobert Levine, Ander Feist, Jane Jensen, Patrick Cox and Kerry The work of Silken Lubbers is more inspired, and it could be argued that their work will one day enjoy the same status as that of their more famous predecessors. Their shoes will be appreciated as works of art, not just foot protection.