The Aris Allen Shoeseum – our shoe museum

Aris Allen Shoeseum is closed right now but hopefully one day we’ll be back! Yes, we still have all this wonderful stuff.

Vintage shoes, footwear advertising and posters, everything a swing dancer of the jazz era would have been familiar with.

1890s Ivory Kid Bridal Pumps with Satin Medallion – “Grandma Widman’s Wedding Shoes”

I saw these on eBay with this as the description:

Wedding shoes of Anna Bush Widman 1868 – 1964. A wonderful grandma who if she were here today she would say, “June, sell them or send them to a museum..”

Well, that was enough for me to want to know more! So I wrote to the seller:

Q: Yum! More photos! Especially of the bottoms of the soles. And more about Grandma Widman. At least what year did she get married? These are clearly really old – that french heel is totally pre-1900. Thanks for listing these. Mar-29-14

And the seller wrote back:

A: I am sending more pictures.. Grandma Widman came to America as a 6 month old baby from Germany- maiden name Bush. I don’t know when she was married but my mother was born in 1896. She was widowed at 49 yrs. and supported herself and two girls by cleaning houses for other women. (no S. S.) She lived to be 96 and I loved her dearly. Now I am a grandmother… where did the time go?

A little detective work:

If Grandma Widman was born in 1868.

She would have been 16-26 (marry in’ age) in 1884-1894.

Which would put her wedding, most likely, during one of those years. Probably before 1896 when her daughter was born.

It’s so much fun to find a shoe with a story!

Grandma Widman: You made it to the internet!! You are now immortal : )

Images are from an eBay auction.

1891 Ad for Allcock’s Corn Shields with Illustration of a Scene in A Shoe Store

This ad is significant in several ways. First, it was a little scandalous, even towards the end of the Victorian era, to show a lady’s foot, much less her ankle. She’s clearly wearing a floor-length gown. Those boots are not made for gawkin’…

And note the conversation:

“Number 3’s Miss?”

“Oh, no I must wear 4s, my corns are so painful”

“Excuse me, not if you use Allcock’s Corn Shields”

Number THREE’S?!? Yes, before growth hormone found its way into the meat supply people were Lilliputian compared to today’s standards.

So the poor thing had to wear unsightly gargantuan 4s.

When you study footwear fashion through the decades you’ll see that 1879 was the last time the little lady in the picture had any chance of wearing anything remotely rounded on her feet! And the worst was yet to come as the 1890s ushered in the bicycle boot craze. Catalogs from the era show that shoes got pointier and practically needle-like as the Victorian era breathed its last gasp.

But better days were on the horizon. By 1899 one sees the rounded toe coming back into fashion, followed immediately by the insanely roomy and bulbous toe so common in Edwardian footwear.

In my opinion the extreme Edwardian departure, from outrageously pointy modes of the late 19th century to shoes that looked like potatoes (not kidding) in the early 20th is the first time in history where, practically overnight, one could march in to the dry goods store and say “No way – that looks like my mother’s shoes – give me a pair of those!”. Flappers took this to the extreme with their bound chests, rolled down stockings and bobbed hairstyles, but the Edwardian jump from Victorian styles that “held court” for so many decades surely paved the way.

And holy cow – check out that hat!

Image from an eBay auction.

1940s Women’s Mesh Boots with Rhinestones by Elman Shoes Salon Originals

Oh my. Museum quality mesh lace up boots.

While researching these exquisite beauties I came across this cool photo of a terrazzo doorstep “on 63rd near the green line” in Chicago on flickr.

1870s Ladies Ivory Kid Wedding Boots with Scalloped Edges – from 1876

Very cool item from an eBay auction in that it has provenance.

These are 1876 boots worn at a wedding in Maine. To quote the seller:

“Very nice pair of C1860-70 ladies white leather button up wedding boots or shoes, in unusually nice condition.

They were worn in 1876 by Mary Belle Ladd Perry of Camden, Maine at her wedding on October 31st.

They stand about 8 1/2″ tall, have 1 1/4″ heels. The sole on the outside measures 2 1/4″ wide and about 9 1/4″ long

They have pearl buttons and scalloped buttonhole edges.”

1903 Rare, Not Totally Racist, Postcard Featuring the Cake Walk

Oh, white people. You totally missed the joke.

There are so many postcards depicting the Cake Walk. And so many of them are insulting to people of African ancestry.

But, just as the word “Jitterbug” was apparently an insult (allegedly Lindy Hoppers watching white kids poorly dance to swing music proclaimed that they looked like “jitterbugs” – or, people who had the DTs – and it caught on), the Cake Walk was invented to mock white people dancing.

From Wikipedia:

A South Carolinian told of Griffin, a fiddler who played for the dances of the whites as well as for the “annual cakewalks of his own people”.^[8] A story told to him by his childhood nanny in 1901 was repeated by 80 year old actor Leigh Whipple, “Us slave watched white folks’ parties where the guests danced a minuet and then paraded in a grand march, with the ladies and gentlemen going different ways and then meeting again, arm in arm, and marching down the center together. Then we’d do it too, but we used to mock ’em every step. Sometimes the white folks noticed it, but they seemed to like it; I guess they thought we couldn’t dance any better.”

And apparently the person who was the best at strutting their stuff would take the cake (literally and figuratively).

Below is a rare postcard in that it simply depicts people who aren’t white enjoying the Cake Walk.

The stereoview card below is of the same genre in that it seems to be a mere depiction of the Cake Walk – not meant to ridicule the subjects in the photo.