The Boot and Shoe Trades in London and Paris in the Long Eighteenth Century

However French fashion became dominant in England and continental Europe
only in the second half of the eighteenth century. French fashion was considered
the result of good taste and sensibility, attention to details and luxury.'TM
3.4.4 Innovation and health
We should be aware that fashion does not evolve independently from larger
social and political changes and it is not always central in understanding product
changes.' 65 The neo-classical style dominating the last decade of the eighteenth
and the first half of the nineteenth century, spreading from France all over
Europe had very deep roots. The enlightenment proposed a new vision of the
body very much dominated by ideas of higiènité. High heels were considered
unhealthy because the allowed only "bad, unsteady walk, something between a
trip and a totter, that French women of rank used to acquire from their high
heels". 166
The late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century medical literature was
spreading much more complex ideas related to feet health and to footwear
design. Shoes were not only considered in terms of quality, but also according to
the new criteria of 'health and comfort'. The most important point, of debatable
scientific value, but strong in capturing the public attention, was the wide range
of deformities caused by the wrong use of shoes. Texts warned about the
inheritance of such deformities and of the "hereditary shape to the foot" that
"ought to have convinced our sharp-pointed grandsirs, and high heeled
grandmamas, that they were not only putting themselves to much personal
inconvenience, but also entailing diseases and deformities upon their
descendants".' 67 Shoemaking was considered by this medical production as an
art not for producing fashionable shoes, but for "discovering the most perfect
164
M. Berg, 'French fancy and cool Britannia: the fashion markets of early modem Europe'
(Unpublished paper, XXII Settimana di Studi - Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica F.
Datini - Prato, 8-12 May 2000), p. 1.
165
P.N. Stearns, Consumerism in world history, cit., p. 22; C. Breward, The culture offashion:
a new history offashionable dress (Manchester, 1995), pp. 1-5.
' Cit. in A. Ribeiro, Fashion in the French Revolution, cit., p. 132. Only in the 1 850s high
heels became common again in female footwear, but were normally concealed under long skirts.
'67 Ibid., p. 196.
144