Women became 'giantesses' with tall platform shoes
Published Saturday November 28th, 2009
Exhibition Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto features rare chopines from Spain, Italy
TORONTO - Practical, these shoes are not.
A woman wearing chopines - the towering platform shoes that were all the rage among the upper classes of 16th-century Venice - required the help of two servants, one on either side, to ensure she stayed upright and didn't topple over into a canal.
"Women transformed themselves into giantesses with these," says Elizabeth Semmelhack, curator of a new exhibit at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto that features rare chopines from Spain and Italy.
On a Pedestal: From Renaissance Chopines to Baroque Heels offers a fascinating - and somewhat naughty - peek at a fashion that, in the long and sometimes outrageous history of footwear, is bound to strike viewers as particularly bizarre.
About 70 pairs of shoes dating from the 16th and 17th centuries are on display, many on loan from museums in Italy, Britain, Sweden, Austria and the United States.
Chopines (pronounced sho-PEENS) were mules initially made of cork in Spain and later wood in Italy, with the tallest soaring to astonishing heights - over 50 centimetres. They were tapered in the centre to reduce weight.
"The shoemakers would sculpt them so that they are quite narrow as they rise up high," says Semmelhack. "They flare at the bottom, creating almost a flower-like shape, allowing the wearer to have some stability and at the same time probably leave a very interesting footprint.
"They really were meant to transform the body into something that was much taller and much longer and required much longer skirts to cover."
The chopines, part of a long line of platform shoes dating back to ancient Greece, were worn as a status symbol proclaiming the wearer's wealth, says Semmelhack. In Spain they were intended to be seen in public but in Venice, where the shoes reached their loftiest altitude, they remained hidden as undergarments behind voluminous and expensively decorated skirts.
"We're lifting the skirts of Renaissance women," Semmelhack says slyly.
Venetian courtesans also tottered about in chopines, suggesting the shoes were both kinky and clumsy. A 1588 Venice postcard showing a woman in a floor-length skirt had a flap that lifted up in peekaboo style, revealing her knickers and chopines.
Designs varied. One pair of Italian chopines in the exhibit has bases of carved pine covered in white kid. Others are covered with gold-coloured velvet and embellished with lace and tassels. A pair from Spain sports green silk damask.
The exhibit also explores the introduction of heels to western footwear in the late 1500s, with upper-class men embracing the style first. There was a practical aspect - the heels helped secure equestrians' feet in stirrups - but the fashion was another expression of status, says Semmelhack.
A pair of boots thought to have been worn by Sweden's King Karl X Gustav has red-painted heels and squared toes, a popular style in the mid-17th century.
On a Pedestal includes early examples of slap-sole shoes - high-heeled footwear with a sole attached flat across the bottom to prevent the heels from sinking into soft ground.
Eventually, women got stuck with the dubious honour of wearing high heels after men abandoned the fashion by 1730, thanks to ideas that arose during the Enlightenment, says Semmelhack.
She agrees that today's trendiest stilettos could be considered just as impractical as the chopines of 16th-century Venice.
"Enlightenment thinking divided the genders - males are rational, females are irrational," Semmelhack explains.
"The idea that irrational aspects of dress are specifically feminine developed in the 17th century and still is expressed in women's fashion today."
On a Pedestal runs until September 2010.
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