Shoes

Ten thousand years of footwear, from Fort Rock sagebrush sandals to carbon-plate supershoes.

23 posts· 8500 BCE – 1989

• The Reebok Pump: fit by inflation 1989
• The Air Jordan I: the $5,000 fine Nike paid gladly 1984
• The Nike Air sole: Frank Rudy's twenty-fourth pitch 1978
• The waffle iron that launched Nike 1974
• The Dassler brothers' shoe factory, and the feud that split a town 1924
• The Converse All-Star, or what forty years on the road built 1917
• The shoe that earned its name in silence 1916
• Jan Matzeliger's lasting machine, or the grammar of a craftsman's hands 1883
• The welt that made shoes worth keeping 1869
• The McKay stitcher, or how a hollow needle ended the age of the hand-sewn shoe 1858
• The straight last: when shoes finally learned left from right 1818
• Louis XIV's red heels: when footwear was a court credential 1673
• The chopine, or how Venice balanced status on a fifty-centimetre platform 1550
• Chopines, or the politics of walking tall 1490
• The poulaine, or how a pointed toe became a matter for Parliament 1340
• The turnshoe, or how medieval cordwainers sewed the seam inside 1100
• Han dynasty silk shoes, or the hierarchy sewn into every sole 100 CE
• Roman caligae, or why the empire marched on hobnails 100 BCE
• Greek krepis and kothornos — the shoe as theater 458 BCE
• Egyptian papyrus sandals — footwear as social code, c. 1500 BCE 1500 BCE
• Ötzi's shoes, or the engineering in a glacier 3300 BCE
• The Areni-1 shoe, and the art of making leather last 3500 BCE
• Fort Rock sandals, the oldest shoes in the world 8500 BCE