Shoe

• 1. Introduction

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  A shoe protects the human foot, yet the industry that makes them now turns over about $200 billion a year, and 90% of the shoes it produces end up in landfills because their mixed materials are so hard to separate or recycle. Shoes are normally sold in pairs, shaped so that one fits the left foot and the other the right, and though the human foot adapts well to almost any terrain, footwear has always offered extra protection. Form was originally tied to function, but shoes have also become fashion statements: steel-toe boots are required safety gear at industrial worksites, while high heels are worn mostly by women for fancy occasions.

  How did a simple covering for the foot end up spanning cheap rubber sandals and shoes built from expensive materials with complex construction that sell for large sums? In many cultures, removing shoes when entering a home is still treated as basic respect, a habit that predates every sneaker brand by millennia.

• 2. Ancient Footwear Worldwide

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  In 1938, archaeologists in Oregon's Fort Rock Cave found sagebrush bark sandals dating to between roughly 10,500 and 9200 years before the present, the earliest known shoes. The world's oldest leather shoe, a single piece of cowhide laced with a cord along seams at the front and back, turned up in the Areni-1 cave complex in Armenia in 2008 and is believed to date to 3500 BC. Otzi the Iceman wore shoes dated to 3300 BC with brown bearskin bases, deerskin side panels and a bark-string net pulled tight around the foot.

  The Jotunheimen shoe, discovered in August 2006, is a leather shoe that archaeologists estimate was made between 1800 and 1100 BC, making it the oldest article of clothing found in Scandinavia. In southern Spain, sandals and other plant-fibre tools uncovered in 2023 at Cueva de los Murciélagos in Albuñol date to roughly 7500 to 4200 BC, the oldest shoes so far found in Europe. Because footwear materials are so perishable, evidence like this is rare, and shoes were likely worn long before any of these survivors were made.

  Footprints at Garden Route National Park, Addo Elephant National Park and Goukamma Nature Reserve in South Africa show crisp edges, no toe impressions and small divots consistent with tied straps, and date to between 73,000 and 136,000 years before the present; bone awls from the same period could have made simple footwear. Separately, the leg bones of the smaller toes grew visibly thinner between about 40,000 and 26,000 years ago, a change researchers link to the regular wearing of shoes rather than occasional use.

  Across North America, many early peoples wore the moccasin, a tight-fitting, soft-soled shoe made from leather or bison hide and often decorated with beads, though it was not waterproof and most people went barefoot in wet or warm weather. South American peoples twisted sisal leaves into twine for sandals, while in Mexico the yucca plant served the same purpose. Egyptian murals dating to 4000 BC show thong sandals in use, sometimes called "thebet," possibly after the city of Thebes, and made from papyrus and palm leaves; the Masai of Africa made similar sandals from rawhide, and in India they were made from wood.

• 3. Barefoot Gods And Soldiers

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  The ancient Greeks largely viewed footwear as self-indulgent and unnecessary, going barefoot by preference and wearing shoes mainly in the theatre to increase an actor's stature. Athletes at the Ancient Olympic Games competed barefoot and naked, Greek gods, heroes and hoplite warriors were depicted without shoes, and Alexander the Great is said to have led barefoot armies into battle.

  The Romans rejected that attitude. Clothing signified power in Rome, and footwear was treated as a civilisational necessity, even though slaves and paupers usually went without. Roman soldiers were issued chiral footwear, meaning a distinct left and right shoe, with riveted insoles that extended the leather's life and improved traction, and the design and height of a soldier's boot marked his rank.

  Around 4 BC, the Greeks began wearing symbolic, heavily decorated footwear to signal status. Courtesans wore leather shoes dyed white, green, lemon or yellow, while young women who were betrothed or newly married wore pure white shoes, and because lightening leather was costly, pale shoes marked the upper class. Soles were sometimes carved with a message that would imprint on the ground with each step, and cobbling became a notable trade, with Greek shoemakers later renowned across the Roman Empire.

• 4. Feet Bound And Heeled

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  In the Pyrenees during the Middle Ages, peasants wore the espadrille, a sandal with a braided jute sole, a fabric upper and laces tied around the ankle; the name comes from the French word for esparto grass, and the shoe originated in Catalonia as early as the 13th century. In China, new styles developed during the Song dynasty from the practice of binding women's feet, first adopted by noble Han families before spreading through society; it allegedly began under the Shang dynasty but grew popular only around AD 960. The Mongols dissolved the practice in 1279 after conquering China, and the Manchus banned it again in 1644, though the Han continued it regardless.

  Medieval European shoes could stretch up to two feet long, their pointed toes stuffed with hair, wool, moss or grass, and were commonly built by the turnshoe method, sewn inside-out and then flipped so the smooth side faced outward. Around 1500, that method was largely replaced by the welted rand technique, which used a stiffer sole that could not be turned inside-out, though turnshoes survived for dance and specialty footwear.

  By the 15th century, pattens, seen as the ancestor of the modern high heel, were popular with both men and women, while the poor and enslaved people in the New World went barefoot. Also in the 15th century, the pointed Crakow, named for Kraków, the capital of Poland, became fashionable, its tip sometimes propped up with whalebone tied to the knee, and chopines, tall platform shoes created in Spain, spread as a status symbol through Venice and the rest of Europe.

  In the 16th century, royalty such as Catherine de Medici and Mary I of England began wearing high heels to appear taller, and by 1580 even men wore them, giving rise to the phrase "well-heeled" for a person of wealth or authority. In 17th-century France, heels were the exclusive privilege of aristocrats, and King Louis XIV outlawed anyone but himself and his royal court from wearing red high heels. From that century on, most leather shoes used a sewn-on sole, a standard that still holds for fine dress shoes, and only gradually, into the 1800s, did shoemakers stop producing "straights" that fit either foot.

• 5. The Machine Age

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  During the Napoleonic Wars, the engineer Marc Brunel built machinery to mass-produce boots for British Army soldiers, devising in 1812 a system that used metallic pins and nails to fasten soles to uppers automatically; the same year, Richard Woodman patented the use of screws and staples for the same purpose. A visitor to Brunel's Battersea factory, Sir Richard Phillips, described how each shoe passed through twenty-five hands, wounded soldiers rather than trained shoemakers, to produce a hundred pairs a day at a contract price of six shillings and sixpence a pair, at least two shillings less than before. When the war ended in 1815, cheaper manual labour and falling demand for military boots put Brunel's system out of business.

  The Crimean War revived interest in mechanised production. A Leicester shoemaker, Tomas Crick, patented a riveting machine in 1853 that used an iron plate to drive rivets into the sole, and by the mid-1850s he had also introduced steam-powered rolling machines for hardening leather and cutting machines that sped up production further. The sewing machine, introduced in 1846, offered another route to mechanisation, and by the late 1850s the industry was shifting toward factories, chiefly in the United States and England.

  In 1856, the American Lyman Blake invented a shoe-stitching machine that he perfected by 1864; in partnership with a man named McKay, it became known as the McKay stitching machine and spread rapidly through New England's manufacturers. By the 1890s, mechanisation was largely complete, and on the 24th of January 1899, Humphrey O'Sullivan of Lowell, Massachusetts, was awarded a patent for a rubber heel for boots and shoes. By the 20th century, the United States had become the world's largest shoe manufacturer.

  China's own reformers pushed back against an older tradition during this period: 19th-century feminists campaigned against foot binding, winning a ban in 1902 that was soon repealed, then reimposed in 1911 by the new Nationalist government, effective mainly in coastal cities. Mao Zedong enforced the ban again in 1949, and though the practice remains forbidden, a number of women alive today still have bound feet.

• 6. Built For Sport

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  The earliest athletic shoes, dating to the mid-19th century, were track spikes fitted with metal cleats for grip. In 1876, the New Liverpool Rubber Company in the United Kingdom made the first rubber-soled plimsolls, designed for the sport of croquet, and by 1892 the American Humphrey O'Sullivan was producing similar shoes using Charles Goodyear's rubber technology. The United States Rubber Company, founded that same year, sold rubber-soled shoes under various names before consolidating them in 1916 under the brand Keds, and wearers nicknamed them "sneakers" because the soft sole let someone sneak up on another person.

  In 1964, Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman of the University of Oregon founded Nike, introducing rubber waffle soles, breathable nylon uppers and cushioned midsoles and heels that reshaped the modern running shoe. Through the 1970s, podiatrists became central to athletic shoe design, studying how feet reacted to running, jumping and side-to-side movement.

  Chuck Taylor developed the shoe that carries his name, the Chuck Taylor All-Star, and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1969 for the design; other manufacturers, including Nike, Adidas and Reebok, began imitating the style through the 1970s. In April 1985, Nike released the Air Jordan, named for the rookie Chicago Bulls player Michael Jordan, and the line sold $100 million worth of shoes in its first year.

  As barefoot running gained popularity in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, manufacturers answered with minimalist shoes such as the Vibram FiveFingers, the Nike Free, and Saucony's Kinvara and Hattori, designed to preserve flexibility while offering some protection. Mexican huaraches serve a similar purpose, echoing the simple running shoes worn by the Tarahumara people of northern Mexico, known for their long-distance running.

• 7. Anatomy Of A Shoe

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  The sole is the part of a shoe in contact with the ground, made from natural rubber, polyurethane or PVC, and ranging from a single simple layer to a complex structure of insole, midsole and outsole. The insole sits beneath the foot and attaches to the lasting margin of the upper during the lasting operation, typically made of cellulosic paperboard or synthetic non-woven board, with many modern shoes offering removable, replaceable footbeds. The outsole, the layer that actually meets the ground, is often leather or resin rubber on dress shoes and natural rubber or polyurethane on casual and work shoes; cleated shoes for soccer, rugby, baseball and golf embed spikes in the outsole for traction, while the midsole between outsole and insole absorbs shock, with running shoes adding extra cushioning beneath the heel.

  The heel sits below the heel bone and is usually made of the same material as the sole; a design called the "gentleman's corner," with the inner forward point chiselled off to stop the heel catching on trouser hems, was first seen in the 1930s. High heels raise the heel above the ball of the foot, a shape that makes the legs look longer, the wearer appear taller, and the calf more defined.

  The upper holds the shoe onto the foot, reduced to a few straps on sandals and flip-flops but far more complex on boots and most men's shoes, connected to the sole by a stitched strip called a welt; tightening mechanisms include laces, buckled straps, zippers, elastic, velcro, buttons and snaps, with a tongue to seal a laced opening and an aglet to protect the lace's end. The vamp is the front section starting behind the toe and wrapping around the eyelets and tongue toward the back of the shoe.

  The medial side of a shoe sits closest to the body's centre line, with the lateral side opposite it, a distinction that applies to both the outsole and the vamp. In 1968, Puma SE introduced the first sneakers with velcro straps instead of laces, a style that caught on widely by the 1980s, especially among children and older wearers. The toe box, which covers and protects the toes, is often made larger for people with toe deformities or swelling, such as long-distance runners.

• 8. Shoes In Culture

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  An 18th-century nursery rhyme, There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, turned footwear into a piece of childhood folklore. In 1948, a shoe salesman named Mahlon Haines built an actual house shaped like a work boot in Hallam, Pennsylvania, as an advertisement; the Haines Shoe House still stands as a roadside attraction. Shoes drive the plots of Cinderella and The Red Shoes, a pair of ruby slippers anchor the film adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and the 1985 comedy The Man with One Red Shoe centres on a man wearing one ordinary shoe and one red one.

  In the Old Testament, a shoe symbolises something worthless, while in the New Testament, removing one's shoes signals servitude; ancient Semitic peoples took off their shoes as a mark of reverence before a sacred person or place, and in Hebrew custom, a widow removed her brother-in-law's shoe to mark his refusal to marry her. In Arab custom, shoe removal instead symbolised the dissolution of a marriage, and today showing the sole of one's shoe is considered an insult across Arab culture, while throwing one is a still greater insult; shoes are barred from mosques as unclean.

  That symbolism has played out in real events: in 2003, Iraqis struck a toppled statue of Saddam Hussein with their shoes, and in 2008, a journalist threw a shoe at United States President George W. Bush to protest the war in Iraq. In Greek culture, empty shoes carry a darker meaning, standing in for the American funeral wreath; a pair left outside a home once told neighbours that the family's son had died in battle. The Shoes on the Danube Bank, a memorial of cast-iron footwear on the riverbank in Budapest, honours the Jews shot there by fascist Arrow Cross militiamen during World War II.