It's Shoe time

I suddenly realise when I'm catching up with other people's posts that I have not written much myself recently. I have not been idle, honestly! I've started two separate projects with friends and also begun a life drawing class - which is taxing. For someone that prefers swift and shaky line drawings the emphasis on tone is a challenge. In amongst all this activity I have also renewed my obsession with shoes and can't seem to do anything without looking for a footwear related link. Talking about it to friends made me relive the earliest memories I have of buying shoes. In the 1950's most of us had Clarks sandals for school and a trip to the shoe shop involved stepping up on to a machine called a pedoscope. You placed your feet into two apertures at the base and looked down through viewing scopes on to your feet which glowed green with X rays. You saw the bones in your feet encased in the shoe form and the machine enabled the fitter to see if they were right for you. They were subsequently removed after concerns were raised about radiation problems. Perhaps they were the reason why my feet have always been my nemesis.

A sudden growth spurt when I was about nine resulted in size eight feet! Whilst it is a common size these days, in those days I was in the minority and buying shoes was a nightmare. When I needed new school shoes I had to wait for Dad, the only car driver, to come home early from work on a Friday and take me on a trawl of every shoe shop within a ten mile radius. In every shop it was the same story. The only things that came any where near me were fashionable a few decades earlier. My gran would have loved them but when you're only 12 or so, the embarassment of wearing such ugly things was tough. Those memories have lingered long and to this day I do not posess many pairs of shoes. I only ever buy black shoes and I never buy what I won't wear regularly so I can count what I own on one hand. Surprising then that one of my jobs I enjoyed the most was in a shoe shop.

During the two years of my A level studies I had a Saturday and holiday relief job in a shoe shop called Dolcis, long since disappeared from the high street, but quite fashionable in their day. I started in the summer of 1970 when the height of fashion was wearing beige or pink suede wedge sandals. Platforms were all the rage and we sold matching handbags and tights with the shoes. Pink shoes and pink tights. Only in the 1970's eh? We had a floorwalker who would welcome customers into the shop. Wearing our overalls, packets of pink tights stuffed into the pockets, we'd be hailed by her to 'Come forward, Miss Gear' to serve people and sell them as many pairs of shoes as we could. I was very good at it and enjoyed it immensely except when parties of ladies came in to buy bridesmaids shoes. Trying to find white satin shoes in the same pattern in masses of sizes was a trial. It was also the era of long black 'wet look' boots with masses of eyelets that took an age to put on. I remember the first pair of leather 'over the knee' platform boots we were sent. They were a bright cobalt blue and priced at £12.99. None of us thought we had a cat's chance in hell of selling a pair at that price! But I sold the first pair and was really chuffed. What a shame we were not paid commission. I was paid a flat rate on a Saturday of £4 and I used to blow it all that night going out dancing with a friend. We didn't call it clubbing in those days and £4 didn't go very far. The place we went to had a milk bar so we just had one glass each week and only ever had alcohol if a chap asked you to dance and then bought you a drink....

Still... back to shoes and this wonderful book currently sitting on my table. I first borrowed it from the library after hearing the author, Caroline Cox, interviewed on Woman's Hour one day a few years ago and I think the book only gets an airing each time I borrow it which is a shame because it is a fascinating read if you love shoes or just love good design. I pore over the pages of shoes from the 70's and they bring back great memories of Dolcis but it covers the whole of the 20th century in wonderful detail focussing on couture shoes.

The foreward is written by Christian Loubertain who designed these lace stilettoes. I used to wear high heels like this in my teens and twenties but doubt I could manage them now. I love the use of lace here but they are trounced in my eyes by the lace shoes, below, designed in the early years of the century by Pietro Yantorny.

Italian born Yantorny moved to Paris and set up his studio there in 1904 marketing himself with the sign: 'Yantorny: the most expensive shoes in the world'. Like a self fulfilling prophecy the interest that this sign elicited led to him becoming a celebrity and attracting the interest of the wealthy clients he wanted. He refused to work for any but the most exceptional women with the most beautiful feet - so he would have not liked the look of me then! They had to pay $3000 dollars, in advance, just to go on his client list. Imagine the value of that in today's currency.He never had more than 20 clients and it was nothing to wait for up to three years for a pair of shoes from him. To achieve the hand crafted couture fit Yantorny made his clients walk barefoot, endlessly walking up and down while he studied their bare feet. He then made plaster casts of them and up to ten trial pairs of shoes until he achieved the couture fit he demanded
bear his name. The shoes above were owned by spendthrift Rita de Acosta Lydig who owned over 300 pairs of Yantorny shoes. Some of them, like these, bore his other trademark; that of using rare antique materials like this venetian gros point lace to adorn them. The more I have read about Yantorny the more fascinated I have become with what he designed and made with such consumate skill.

Of course Italians have often been synonomous with classic quality shoes and that started me off on a few doodles in my sketchbook, not with any purpose in mind. I just like drawing the shape of shoes and sticking bits of paper down.

Yesterday I bought a pair of unworn baby Gap shoes in the charity shop for 99p. I have ideas to pimp them up in some way after drawing them first. I might collage onto them or paint them or stitch into them. Who knows? I quite like the idea of deconstructing them and remaking them in a different way. I'm also playing about with wire and making 3d shoes but I have not quite got there yet. All too often I am stopped in my tracks by one of those 'what if' moments. I go off on a tangent and forget what I originally set out to do. So, it's unlikely I'm going to run out of imagination or ideas.... just need to keep focussed.

I've started a couple of printing plates going back to those sandal memories to start with. I have an idea of making an accordion book of the same shoe in lots of different colourways or something along those lines. I don't have a time scale in mind but if I produce something I will share it with you. In return, if anyone has some great shoe collections to blog about or some wacky shoe photos to share I shall be your most dedicated reader!