The development of shoes

The development history of shoes

Famous shoe designers mainly emerged in Europe, because in the United States, with the rapid development of mass production of modern shoes, individual shoemakers became redundant. The American shoe industry originated in the New England colonies, where farmers made their own shoes in their kitchens during the winter. The whole family is involved in this effort. Men cut the leather and attach the soles, while women sew the hems. The workbench used by colonial shoemakers is now a collector's item. Since they had mastered the skills of shoemaking, some courageous farmers opened small shoe workshops. Three or four workers worked together to assemble the shoe materials sewn by local shoemakers, sole them, and then make finished shoes.

In 1750, a shoe factory was built in Lean, Massachusetts, which further developed local shoemaking technology. There, workers no longer make shoes independently. Each step of making shoes is handled by a trained person. The production line begins to take shape. At first, shoes were still made to order, but in order to keep workers occupied during the off-season, shoe shop owners began to make shoes without pre-orders. These shoes are called shoes for sale and are displayed in the windows of local shops. In the early days, the Harvey brothers loaded their shoes for sale in a horse-drawn carriage and went to nearby places to sell them.

In 1793, they opened the first shoe retail store in Boston, selling finished shoes every Wednesday and Saturday. Since the mid-eighteenth century, inventors had been working on improving sewing machines. It was not until 1790 that the first sewing machine specifically used for leather processing was modified by an Englishman named Thomas Saint. It's pretty much just an awl that points straight up to punch holes in the leather. Sir Mark Brownler of England was the chief engineer of New York Harbor. He invented a press that could use metal needles to sew the uppers and soles together. In order to fulfill his duty in the British anti-Napoleonic war, Brownler produced 400 pairs of shoes a day with the help of disabled soldiers. After the war, the British shoemaking industry returned to manual operations.

In 1810, a similar machine appeared in the United States. At the same time, two Frenchmen named Jingguebler and Jollier were also building such machines in Paris. A shoemaker named Bresi from Stuttgart, Germany, tried to use screws to connect the upper and sole. In 1829, a man named Nathaniel Leonardo in Merrimack, Massachusetts, USA, finally perfected the shoe nail machine. Around 1812, Thomas Blanchard of Sandton, Massachusetts, converted a lathe used for making gun stocks into a machine used to carve shoe lasts. The shoe last was a wooden mold made into a shoe shape. It was assembled on top of it. In the 1830s, still in New England, shoemakers began cutting shoe uppers with the help of molds rather than relying on individual cutting skills. In the 1840s, rolling machines were used in leather compression to facilitate the formation of the upper and heel reinforcements. The British continued to make shoes by hand until the end of the 19th century, when they were forced to switch to machine production due to economic needs. Only then did they discover that all patent rights belonged to Americans, and they had to rent American machines and pay royalties. But this also allows England to retain a strong tradition of hand-made shoes.

In 1846, Ellis Howey of Spencer, Massachusetts patented a sewing machine. This machine can not only sew cloth, but also sew leather with waxed thread. Three years later, American inventor Ishaq M. Singer invented a sewing machine with a pedal in Boston.

In 1858, Leman B. Black invented a machine that could sew the soles and uppers together. Two years later, a gentleman named Mike perfected the machine. In the next 21 years, Blake and Mike jointly monopolized the machine-made shoe industry. In Italy, the tradition of handmade shoes continued into the twentieth century, while in France, the design of custom shoes was closely integrated with the small-scale fashion industry that produced them. The fashion industry in Paris was founded by an Englishman named Charles Frederick Wuss. In 1858, he opened a fashion store at 7 Avenue de La Pace in Paris. He was the first to launch a batch of clothing every season and ask young girls to serve as models.

As the first person to rise in the fashion industry, he was also the first to establish a system for designing clothing. The designed clothing could be mass-produced in factories in Paris and sold all over the world. His first big opportunity came when Princess Pauline de Metrich, wife of the Austrian Ambassador to France, wore one of his clothes to attend a court ball held by Napoleon III. Soon Napoleon III's wife, Empress Josephine, and other ladies at court began to wear Wusse's clothes. He designed the luxurious petticoat of the Second Empire with a padded back, making it the standard garment for women in the 1870s and 1880s. Wusse dominated sartorial taste and before his death in 1895, he was making clothes for all the royal families of Europe. Some garments were secretly sent to Queen Victoria's court without labels. After Wusse's death, the business was taken over by his two sons, Gaston and Jean-Philippe. They soon realized that fashion was changing rapidly, and in 1900, in order to keep up with changing fashion tastes, they invited designer Paul Boles, who was only 21 years old at the time. Boles' avant-garde clothing soon appeared on the celebrities and dignitaries of the day. After four years with the Wus Brothers, he left them to start a new business. At that time, a number of other fashion houses - Paquet, Cherout, Dauchet - also sprung up around the Woos Brothers store and on the adjacent Place Vend?me, and Paris became the world's leading fashion house. center of industry. Most shoemakers worked in obscurity for fashion houses, but a few began to become well-known shoe designers.

Fashionable women wearing Boles or Paquet must be wearing shoes designed by Chabali on the Via Lischerry or Ferry on the Via De La Gourenghi Bartlier. Pilot of Paradis-Bosenler Street is the most fashionable of these designers. He was born in 1817, the son of a country shoemaker, and learned the shoemaking technology from his father. In 1855, he arrived in Paris and made a name for himself among fashion industry buyers with the Woos Brothers, mainly due to the heel he designed, which was thinner and straighter than the popular Louis heels at the time. After Pillet retired, his son took over the business. Until World War II, Pillet's shoes were known for their elegance. While Pillet attracted thousands of customers to his shoe stores in London and Paris, another famous shoe designer who started working in Paris during World War I won only 20 customers. His name is Pito Yantni, and he calls himself "the most expensive designer in the world." This ensures that he has an exclusive customer base. His shoes are now on display at the Museum of Art of the City of New York. After Yantney, Andre Peruggi is another young designer from Les. He learned his shoemaking skills from his Italian father. Peruggi was brought to Paris by Paulet and worked in many fashion companies. Two thousand of the shoes he designed are now on display at the De La Chauxu Museum in Norman, France. Salvatore Ferragamo, a young Italian shoemaker, immigrated to Boston in 1914 and brought the skill of handmade women's shoes back to the United States. Disillusioned with the machine-made shoemaking methods in the United States, he moved to California and became a prop maker while also handmaking shoes for people in the film industry. Soon movie stars were buying his shoes. After he returned to Italy in 1927, the stars remained his loyal customers. In the 1930s, he developed shoes with cork soles, which were popular for more than ten years. After his death, his masterpieces were exhibited around the world.

In the 1940s, a young British man named David Evans came to the West Coast of the United States after Ferragamo and became a shoe designer for Hollywood stars. He also designed shoes for some of New York's most famous fashion designers, including Bill Blass and Oscar de la Renta. Meanwhile, the legendary Roger Ver went to Paris to work for Christian Dell, where he became famous for designing stiletto-heeled women's shoes. His creative works are sought after by art museums around the world.

Now a new generation of shoe designers has emerged in Europe and the United States. Although no museum has paid attention to them yet, their works have been favored by customers and fashion designers. Marlo Blahnik, Joan Halpern, Maude Freejean, Bass and Hobert Levine, Ander Feist, Jane Jensen, Patrick Cox and Kerry The work of Silken Lubbers is more inspired, and it could be argued that their work will one day enjoy the same status as that of their more famous predecessors. Their shoes will be appreciated as works of art, not just foot protection.

Shoes have a long history of development. During the Yangshao Culture period about 5,000 years ago, the most primitive shoes made of animal skins appeared. A pair of wool women's boots unearthed in Loulan, Xinjiang, is 4,000 years old. The entire pair of shoes consists of two parts: the boot shaft and the sole. They can be called the best boots in the world. In the "Book of Changes" written more than 3,000 years ago, the word "Lu" representing shoes has appeared. During the Warring States Period, Sun Bin had his kneecaps broken due to being spoiled and could not walk, so he cut the "soles" and "tops" out of hard leather and invented Gao Pi Xuan, which later became boots. There is a pair of 2000 boots in the Chinese History Museum. Pi Xuan many years ago.

Later, due to the increasing number of materials, styles and uses of shoes, the types of shoes also began to be enriched. According to the different materials, shoes can usually be divided into three types: grass, cloth and leather.

Built shoes refer to shoes made of hemp silk, damask, silk, brocade and other fabrics. In the Han Dynasty, they were mostly bifurcated, with the soles woven with hemp thread, and were also called double-pointed square shoes. During the Wei and Jin Dynasties, it was popular to embroider double animal patterns on the front of the shoes.

At the time of abandonment, clogs became a fashion. They are shoes with wooden teeth and are composed of three parts: flat, tie and teeth.

Leather shoes and leather boots made of leather, cotton felt, etc. are also called "horse boots" or "high boots". They were originally worn by nomadic people in the north. They include dry boots, flower boots, leather boots, and felt boots. Boots, single boots, cotton boots, cloud-head boots, goose-top boots, etc. According to legend, Sun Bin was the ancestor of boots. During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, they were widely popular in the north and spread to the south of the Yangtze River. By the Tang Dynasty, they were popular among officials and common people (it was not until the Ming and Qing Dynasties that the court ordered that ordinary people were prohibited from wearing boots, and only officials could wear boots).

Leather shoes were also popular in the Song Dynasty. Men mostly wore small leather shoes, while women mostly wore round, flat or cocked heads, which were also decorated with various flower and bird patterns. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, women's cloth shoes with high toes and flat and thick soles began to appear. These shoes made people look extra slender.

In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the production methods and styles of shoes gradually merged and became more sophisticated. The shoes of the Ming Dynasty were mostly thick and thick. People in the north wore diamond-patterned silk shoes, while those in the south of the Yangtze River often wore brown linen shoes.

During the Qing Dynasty, men's shoes were mainly pointed-toe shoes, made of satin in summer and autumn and velvet in winter. They were divided into thick and thin soles, with single or double beams on the top and thorns on the uppers. The flowers or the toe of the shoe are designed in the shape of a Ruyi head cirrus. Women's shoes in the Qing Dynasty were the most distinctive. The soles were mostly made of wood and ranged from one to five inches in height. Their soles were wide at the top and rounded at the bottom. They were called "horseshoe soles" or "flowerpot soles". The uppers are often made of silk and satin with colorful embroidery on them. Some aristocratic women also inlaid various kinds of jewelry on the uppers, which makes them look particularly tall and straight. However, due to inconvenience in walking, elderly women or people with low status usually wear wooden flat shoes. In ancient times, shoes were called shoes. In primitive times, there was no concept of shoes. People used animal skins to wrap their feet to facilitate production work such as gathering and hunting. With the continuous improvement of productivity, people began to use leather, silk, linen, grass and other materials to make shoes.

Shoes were made of different materials in ancient times, such as blue silk shoes in the Han Dynasty, shoes woven with silk thread in the Jin Dynasty, cloud-head brocade shoes in the Tang Dynasty, and wooden shoes called clogs. There are also different colors, with red being the top grade. It is usually matched with the crown robe and is a must-have dress for emperors when they participate in grand ceremonies.