Baby booties to orthopedic sandals, we spend most of our waking lives in shoes, and from them we may learn something about our culture, our history, and ourselves.
We wear our hearts on our soles. “Shoes are the best indicator of how people are feeling,” says June Swann, a shoe historian based in Northampton, England. To hear Swann tell it, you can chart the rise and fall of prosperity from the elevation of a heel; hear the distant rumblings of war in the configuration of a toe; measure social change by the thickness of a sole.
Shoes are our most intimate friend everyday.
