Shoes date back to the 8,000s BC

 

Shoes date back to the 8,000s BC – a very long history, indeed. Over the millennia all manner of styles and materials have been used for shoes. Some successful (the modern athletic shoe) and some not successful at all (lotus shoes). This list looks at ten bizarre styles of shoe from early to modern history. 1) Lotus Shoes – China, from the 10th century to 2009

The Han Chinese tradition of binding women’s feet to make them appear as small as a lotus bud lasted well over a thousand years. Shoes from the north, especially Beijing, had a ‘bow’ shape, an exaggerated curved sole and heel in one piece, often with leather reinforcements at toe and heel. Style conscious women from Shanghai in the late 19th century and early 20th century, (then the fashion capital of China), liked a multiple heel, while those from the southern provinces such as Guangdong wore shoes often made of black cotton or silk, with a fairly flat heel. Iron or wooden studs were added in some cases to the soles to raise and protect the embroidered silk shoe from the dirt of the streets.

As part of her dowry, a woman would make several pairs of shoes as proof of her needlework ability, as well as her small feet. After her wedding, a bride gave each of her main female in-laws a pair of shoes at a special ceremony known as “dividing the shoes.” The last shoe factory to stop mass production of lotus shoes was the Zhiqiang Shoe Factory. The factory added lotus shoes for old Chinese women who still had bound feet to it’s product range in 1991. In the first two years, more than 2,000 pairs of shoes were sold annually. It announced in 2009 that it will make the shoes only on a special-order basis

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Source:listverse.com

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Posted by: Tukiyooo Shoes date back to the 8,000s BC Updated at : 7:39 PM

Thursday, October 31, 2013