A fossil of a (naked) human foot print that is believed to be about one million years old (Kenya, photograph by courtesy of Matthew Bennett, Bournemouth University, England.)
In the beginning there was a foot, and it was naked ............
The foot is an essential, albeit often overlooked, area of the human body - until that blister or bunion comes. Yet millions of euros are spent every year on clothing and decorating the feet. The use of footwear; a term that includes items generally worn on the feet and lower legs, goes back thousands of years and it comes in many different forms. But how often do we actually stop and seriously think about our feet and how we dress them?
The materials and final appearance of traditional footwear are related to climate, geography, cultural influences, religion, social status, whether they are worn indoors or outdoors (or indeed both), the type of occupation (a nurse wears different footwear from a metal worker), sport or recreation (compare for example, the shoes worn while playing golf and the boots worn to play football), as well as age and gender. Sometimes the choice of footwear is based only on its ornamental value.
Detail from an early 20th century mule from Vietnam showing the embroidery details (TRC 2009.0117a-b)
