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Author
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Comment
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gigi
Unregistered User
(11/9/05 10:26 pm)
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shoes and fashions?
hey a favorite topic of mine shoes.
I have to write a report in my fashion class about fashion through the ages and I decided to focus on shoes as they are an integral part of dress especailly if you are from a place that has winter (like me)
Folklore and fairytale always is descriptive especailly on what the female lead wears.
Examples? And perhaps if you could find a specific fashion in a specific tale? ie a chanel silhouette suit in PrettY woman ...(Not looking for those examples though...The Traditonal stories)
gigi
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(11/9/05 10:52 pm)
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Re: shoes and fashions?
Ah, shoes are great in fairy tales. There's the most obvious one--Cinderella's glass slippers, and I believe that in the earliest known variant, a Chinese tale, has her wearing gold slippers. Then there's the red shoes, the dancing shoes, from the Hans Christian Andersen tale, "The Red Shoes," and the lovely shoes from his "Girl Who Trod on a Loaf." In "The Juniper Tree," the dead brother reincarnated as a bird brings red shoes back to his sister. There are delicate dancing slippers that get worn out in "Twelve Dancing Princesses."
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Helen J Pilinovsky
Registered User
(11/10/05 12:14 am)
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Re: shoes and fashions?
Also, the iron shoes in many variants of "East of the Sun, West of the Moon", symbolizing the heroine's perseverance in the face of adversity. Not fashionable, necessarily, but certainly interesting (particularly in light of modern steel-toed boots).
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princessterribel
Registered User
(11/10/05 3:21 am)
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Re: shoes and fashions?
hehe...that sounds like a fun topic!
Cinderella is the most obvious one, with the glass slipper...there is probably a lot you could say about that. Witht he shoe being so small and therefore more beautiful and probably more fashionable. Someone has already mentioned the chinese Cinderella but if we look a little deeper we may find the source of the glass slipper ideal, that being the ancient chinese practice of foot binding. I am sure you know about this but I'll mention it anyway, the Chinese found small feet to be particularly beautiful so wmen were expected to bind their feet against stones or wood so that they would not grow too big. That was to do witht he fashion and perception of what is beautiful at the time.
Also, (although this may have absolutely NOTHING to do with what your looking for) Grimms snow whilte has the queen dancing in red hot shoes till she dies. How fantastically gruesome.
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Heidi Anne Heiner
ezOP
(11/10/05 8:24 am)
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Re: shoes and fashions?
Gigi,
Footwear in fairy tales is a fairly frequent topic on the board. Do be sure to search the archives through the main page of SurLaLune. A few examples just from the first page of 149 results:
shoe symbolism
shoe ref's please
Red shoes other than Andersen
Heidi
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Crceres
Registered User
(11/10/05 9:41 am)
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History with shoes
Gigi--
Unless I'm mistaken, you're looking for historical connections between shoes and the stories they show up in, right?
I'm not sure, but it seems to me there are a couple of stories where a particular type of shoe was significant--like wooden clogs or boots, something common that wasn't fancied up for the story. Hm, I'll have to think about that and see if I can remember what it was.
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gigi
Unregistered User
(11/15/05 5:00 pm)
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shoes
Well I remmeber where I have read about the shoes. It is a book with and introduction by the god of shoes Blahnik. It's a big book an dit describes the fashion of shoes through the ages.
You know the shoes that Santa's elfs wear? These were popular in the Middle Age. The pointed curled tips would get longer if you were important. Signifying you didnt have to do work.
The fashion soon became a male competitve thing. Supposedly they came to be seen as phallic and that the Church even banned this type of shoe.
anyway
I have a report to do now on shoes for my fashion class.
gigi
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Eien
Unregistered User
(11/15/05 10:31 pm)
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re: shoes
What about sandals?
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nwhiting
Registered User
(11/26/05 8:33 am)
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Re: shoes
Tread carefully here with CInderella!
That original Cinderella shoe was not a glass slipper, but a slipper of "fur" and a stand-in for virginity! Mistaken translation from the French, as I understand it (it'd take me a while to find the research I learned this from--it was long ago). The french for glass and for fur were somehow similar, but I don't remember the french anymore.
I spent a whole lot of years doing theatrical costume design. Amazing what you find doing clothing research!
Nancy Whiting
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princessterribel
Registered User
(11/27/05 4:22 am)
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Re: shoes
no, no, no...Glass was very expensive in France at the time at which Perrault was writing and it would therefore make sense for the slipper to be made of glass, especially as he was writing for the french aristocracy. I know the research you are reading about and I think the person concluded that whilst some critics got confused and thought he meant fur, 'as the words are rather similar', it is more or less universally accepted that he meant glass...critics eh? Who needs 'em?
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