Communicating fashion: shoes and fabric through time - Essay Example

And there is always someone to judge if what you’re wearing is ‘fashionable’ or completely out of style.Over the years people have spent a lot of time trying to study how it all started. Like they say, to know where you’re going, you need to know where you come from. This began a tremendous search on the different types of clothes, shoes and other fashion accessories people wore from the beginning of time. We all have grown up watching The Flintstones and even in the Stone Age, Wilma and Betty managed to look chic and stylish.

But there is a lot more to what we see. Fashion began from nothing and has evolved over the years into something so complex, yet is viewed best in its simplicity. ‘Les Sommets de la Mode’ In her book, Elizabeth Semmelhack has stressed on the link between fashion and one’s individuality. This is something that all fashion enthusiasts say time and again. It is all about expression. How one dresses, often gives some insight on them as an individual, and thus, fashion can be considered as a means of communication among individuals.

This book focuses on the journey and evolution of the shoe as we know it today. Over the ages, the shoe, like clothing and accessories, has been an indication of one’s status, gender and aesthetic sense. . were worn by both men and women, to the wedges, to simple ballerina pumps that all women love wearing today, whether to work or for a fun day, since they combine style with comfort. This book discusses in detail the changes that shoes underwent over the ages. The heel of the shoe and the fabric chosen to make it for instance, showed one’s status in society.

This book, however informative, can be a drag. The author has just taken the facts and put them together, making conclusions from the type of shoe. There is no source to validate that conclusion. The author could very well be wrong. For instance, the author has made conclusions that a certain shoe belonged to a young boy, when it could easily have belonged to a woman or a man with really tiny feet. Also, I would say that the book is more illustrative and the writing just gives a brief on what is in the picture.

There isn’t a sound flow in it that would lead the history of one type of shoe to another and tickle the thought of the reader. Even though it is meant to be informative, the author could have added that element that would provoke the reader’s thought. However, I would like to appreciate the research that went into the construction of this book. It couldn’t have been easy to gather so much information, pictures and the meaning of so many various types of shoes from France, from the sixteenth century.

Elevated shoes were initially worn by both men and women and were ridiculously impractical to walk in. The whole purpose of this being adopted by rich women was to get the help of chivalrous men or from their servants. The wealthy have always enjoyed flaunting what they have and this is just another example of that. These gave way to the making of ‘pints’ that could reach up to 75 centimeters and