Among the many highlights in Walk This Way are shoes of historic value that have survived the years to tell stories of the past, such as a pair of pink silk embroidered boudoir shoes created especially for the 1867 Paris Universal Exposition that reflected Western consumers’ clamor for “exotic” textiles in an era of European imperial expansion. Family heirlooms, such as satin bridal slippers or baby shoes, serve as personal mementos while demonstrating the implications of collecting. The exhibition also includes artifacts from the New-York Historical Society, including brass and bronze shoe buckles from a Revolutionary War officer’s shoes (1760-83) that were excavated in Washington Heights, and a pair of leather child’s shoes (ca. 1904) that were recovered from a victim of the tragic General Slocum steamship fire.
The early 20th century witnessed a revolution in the way women dressed, moved, and acted in public, as the floor-length gowns of the late 1800s gradually gave way to shorter skirts and slim silhouettes. Dance halls flourished, and manufacturers produced intricately beaded evening shoes with buttoned straps that kept shoes secure while women danced the tango or the Charleston.
The country also saw a revolution in women’s political participation, when the fight for the vote moved from the drawing room to the streets and hundreds of women marched down Fifth Avenue in America’s first suffrage parade in May 1910. Many suffragists wore practical but stylish shoes, such as the black leather and white felt high-buttoned boots (ca. 1920), spectator pumps, and lace-up shoes on view in the exhibition. (Below and right: Dahlia bow tie from the museum's shop)
The dawn of department stores at the turn of the century created a place of leisure for affluent women and employment opportunities for working women, so retailers began to compete for customers with colorful advertisements and celebrity endorsements. Stores like Saks Fifth Avenue offered glamorous shoes like red velvet and gold T-strap pumps (ca. 1937) or peep-toe mules with clear Lucite flowered heels (mid-1950s). The fashion industry also partnered with Hollywood to create custom shoes for motion pictures and celebrities — such as Salvatore Ferragamo’s handmade black needlepoint Tuscan lace heels (c. 1954-55) designed for Italian actress Sophia Loren—which inspired consumers to purchase similar styles to emulate their film idols.
Walk This Way also explores the process of shoemaking, examining shoe production and the role of women in the footwear field — one of the first industries to embrace large-scale. By 1850, shoemaking was America’s second-largest industry after agriculture, and as of 1909, New York was the third-largest producer of shoes in the country. In the early 1900s, when women made up less than 20 percent of the total industrial workforce, one-third of the workers in shoe factories were women. Women became active in trade unions like the Daughters of St. Crispin, named after the patron saint of shoemakers, and the International Boot & Shoe Workers Union, participating in strikes to protest low wages and poor treatment. Considered radical for its time, by 1904 the Boot & Shoe Workers Union constitution called for “uniform wages for the same class of work, regardless of sex.” An intricately beaded shoe (c. 1915), stamped with the union seal, shows off the quality of American shoemaking.
By the second half of the 20th century, women designers had made a significant impact but were often hidden behind the scenes. The exhibition profiles Beth Levine (1914-2006) — the “First Lady of Shoe Design” — who ran Herbert Levine, Inc., a company named for her husband because “it seemed right that a shoemaker was a man.” Levine introduced luxurious new materials and innovative new designs like the “Spring-o-lator,” a strip of elastic tape to keep backless shoes on the wearer’s feet.
The exhibition is enhanced by an installation of unique designs made using a wide range of materials, from corrugated cardboard to stained glass and wire — including a selection of artists’ “fantasy shoes” commissioned by Jane Gershon Weitzman for display in Stuart Weitzman store windows. Also on view will be ten unique shoe designs by finalists in the Stuart Weitzman Footwear Design competition, submitted by New York metro-area high school students in the categories of socially conscious fashion or material innovation.
Walk This Way: Footwear from the Stuart Weitzman Collection of Historic Shoes, published by D Giles Limited, will be available in March 2018 from the NYHistory Store and other retailers. The book by Edward Maeder, with contributions by Stuart Weitzman and Valerie Paley, features 180 illustrations, revealing the evolution of women’s footwear in parallel with changes in women’s lives.
Left: Accessory set, American, including muff and tippet, 1880–99. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection, 2009. Right: John James Audubon, Herring Gull (Larus argentatus), Study for Havell pl. 291, 1831.
Another New York Historical Society Exhibit
Feathers: Fashion and the Fight for Wildlife, an exhibition exploring the history of the ground-breaking Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, examines the circumstances that inspired early environmentalists—many of them women and New Yorkers—to champion the protection of endangered birds. Administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Migratory Bird Act prohibited the hunting, killing, trading, and shipping of migratory birds. It also regulated the nation’s commercial plume trade, which had decimated many American bird species to the point of near extinction.
To commemorate the centennial of this landmark legislation, Feathers: Fashion and the Fight for Wildlife delves into the history of the Act by examining the economic and social circumstances that inspired the early environmentalists and activists who lobbied for the precedent-setting legislation. New York was the center of the US feather trade, and the exhibition investigates how the act impacted the city’s feather importers, hat manufacturers, retailers, and fashion consumers. The spirited campaign is told through clothing and accessories, books, ephemera, photographs, and original watercolor models by John James Audubon for The Birds of America, accompanied by recorded bird songs from The Macaulay Library of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Curated by Dr. Roberta J.M. Olson, Curator of Drawings, and Dr. Debra Schmidt Bach, Curator of Decorative Arts.
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