Footwear is an invention of necessity to protect us from the elements beneath. Over the years shoes have dramatically changed due to cultures and fashions. Footwear is under the influence of fashion.

When you purchase shoes the usual questions start emerging, what style? size? Is it well made? These questions are important, a pair of shoes can have an overall effect on a persons health and happiness. Not only pain and discomfort can be brought on by the wrong shoes but headaches, backaches and leg cramps.

How Many Miles Do You Walk In A Lifetime?
Approximately a person will walk 70,000 miles in a lifetime, so it is important to purchase the correct shoes.

The major importance is not to be tempted by the latest fashion, the may look good but are the comfortable.

" You can tell a person by the shoes they wear "

Just think of those different styles, shapes, constructions, decorations Fashion in expressed in different ways gender, age, economic strata and social echelon of its wearer. Fashion can facilitate or hinder comfort health and ease of movement. It reflects cultural ritual, morality and sexual liberation. It responds to foreign influences, political turmoil, economic stability and artistic sensibility. It is made by the latest scientific developments and technological innovations. It is influenced by popular culture and leading personalities. Everything that shapes our world affects and inspires fashion and by looking at historical fashion within the context of when it was made we can understand how it came about.

History Of The Shoe, Where did it start?

Shoes where first named by the Greeks and later the Romans, who provided the root for many of our present day footwear styles, including soccus, sandalium and muleus (sock, sandal and mule). During the late Roman (Byzantine) empire, Christian morality deemed it sinful to expose the body. St Clement of Alexandria in the third century AD Preached humility for woman who showed their toes. Byzantine footwear covered the feet and shoes replaced the sandals that both men and women had worn for centuries.

Fashion began to change around 1600 as the barriers in dress distinction between classes started to break down. It became a commodity that was traded throughout Europe, remaining elitist through consumption, quality and extravagance. The working classes adapted high fashion into simpler modes using humbler materials and were only restricted by cost and practicality.

By the middle of the seventeenth century France had become a beacon of style for all of Europe to emulate. The excesses of baroque were indulged under Louis XIV, and the fashions and arts of France, favoured by European nobility, spread throughout fashionable society. Suddenly there was an interest in high thin-heeled shoes, and by the 1760s English ladies had abandoned their sensible heels to take up the French curvaceous pompadour heel and later, in the 1770s, the Italian stiletto like heel.