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Need-to-Know Shoe History Facts

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Photo by Castorly Stock from Pexels
Photo by Castorly Stock from Pexels

It’s hard to imagine a wardrobe without at least two pairs of shoes. Leaving home barefoot sounds like a weird idea. But it was times when shoes were the lux and it was easier to walk without it the whole warm season than buy it. So we collected a few shoe history facts to help you with your history homework and give you some new knowledge!

Shoe History Facts

  1. Did you wonder when the first shoe was worn? Historians think it was 3300 years before our era. Almost thirty years ago on the border of Austria and Italy was found a body from the Stone Age. It was amazing that the clothes and shoes were in perfect condition. So, hay-stuffed deerskin shoes are the oldest known.
  2. In ancient Egypt shoes were a sign of your class. Slaves were not allowed to cover their feet with it, commoners wore papyrus sandals. High society wore yellow and red shoes. A lot like exclusive red-sole Louboutin in our time!
  3. Actually, Egyptians were not the only ones who did color-coding. In 1673, King Louis XIV set the trend for red heels and soles for nobles only. And for a long time, all European royalties kept this practice.
  4. We are happy to live at our time when almost everyone can find a comfortable pair of shoes. Until the year 1818, you weren’t able to buy a proper pair of shoes. It was only left-foot shoes everywhere. The well-done invention, this right-foot shoe!
  5. Heels were invented not for women. As a lot of people know, in Europe heels were worn by male aristocrats to look taller and more dangerous. Originally this type of shoe was invented in Persia in the 15th century and it was just a decision for comfort – heels were nice to hold the stirrups.
  6. Ancient Greek theatre also made a difference between characters using the heel. As costumes were the first thing to differentiate actors, tragic actors wore platform sandals to rise over the comic ones who were in plain socks.
  7. Do you like tales? The most famous shoe-related tale is Cinderella. The first variation of this story appeared in ancient Egypt and spread through times and continents. For a long time, the shoe was a representation of the importance and power of the main character.

    Image by Al Buettner from Pixabay
    Image by Al Buettner from Pixabay
  8. We have a special part in our brains which activates when we started to collect shoes. Suzanne Ferriss, Ph.D., and editor of “Footnotes: On Shoes,” said that a woman’s addiction to buying shoes triggers an area in the brain’s prefrontal cortex that is called the collecting spot. She said that a lot of women organize their shoes as it is in the shop window.
  9. We think it’s a gender-neutral type of collecting because the Guinness Record for the biggest collection took the owner of ShoeZeum with 2388 pairs of sneakers.
  10. Surprisingly, the most expensive shoes sold at an auction weren’t the ones with diamonds on it. It was a pair of ruby red slippers from the 1939 movie “Wizard of Oz”. It’s known only four pairs of these slippers made from red silk faille overlaid with a sequined georgette. So it’s not surprising that in 2000 one of the pairs was bought for $660,000!

Hope you found some new shoe history facts and it will inspire you to made your own research. Maybe it will end with buying a new pair with their own history?

Photo by Ekrulila from Pexels
Photo by Ekrulila from Pexels

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