Art, shoes and curiosities: With the right shoes we’ll conquer the world!

Part 1: The world’s first footwear and the torture of lotus shoes

I changed the famous words by Marilyn Monroe a bit; she proposed to give the right shoes only to girls. I am sure our boys deserve the right shoes as well. We are only human beings and whether we like it or not, we need self-confidence and some comfort to achieve anything.

From the very beginning, human beings thought about covering themselves not just for health’s sake but for the visual effects as well, and the look of footwear (and sometimes even its size) wasn’t only the measure of the physical beauty, but often about the social status of the owners. As history shows, the look is often much more important than any health benefits.

Nobody can be sure of where the very first pair of shoes will be found, but one of the oldest pairs was discovered in Armenia. It was well made, leather, bespoke and in very good condition, probably a pair for the whole family. The “sneaker” was 5,500 years old and it seems to me that its basic design isn’t far from modern sport shoes, just using different materials.

When I saw Lotus shoes for the first time, I thought it was a mistake because such a thing, though pretty, couldn’t be footwear for an adult. I was wrong. The perfect foot was considered to be 10 centimetres long or less (three Chinese inches), and was called “the golden lily”. To achieve this length, a foot must be bound. A foot of five inches was given the name “silver lily” and longer feet were called “iron lily”. The names rank the sizes, but it wasn’t the only important feature.

Shape was also very significant. The perfectly bound foot was formed like the button of a lotus flower with a full, round heel. Foot binding tradition was born in southern China more than 1,000 years ago, and was a sign of wealth, nobility and royalty because a woman with such feet couldn’t do a lot. By the end of the 17th century, thousands of women from all classes were binding their feet in imitation of the upper classes.

I think that Lotus shoes were not just about footwear, but a whole lifestyle, deeply connected to Chinese culture and traditions where the beauty of feet was appreciated and accented so much that even before marriage a woman would finish making at least four pairs of shoes, 16 being the ideal amount. Even for the night of her marriage, a bride could have created a pair of red sleeping slippers with wonderful embroidery on all the sides and the bottom (well-off women spent a lot of time with their feet up). In China, red is a lucky colour used for different festive occasions, making it a preferable colour.

The custom of binding feet was outlawed in 1911 and completely abandoned by 1949. To me Lotus shoes look more like the tools of torture.