Record Staff
The Beaulne Museum in Coaticook has put together a new exhibit entitled Putting your best foot forward: The History of the Shoe. The exhibit will launch on March 12, and remain on display until Nov. 26, 2023.
According to a press release, the shoe is said to have been invented in the Middle Paleolithic around 40,000 years ago. However, it was not until the Upper Paleolithic period that shoes were routinely worn. Made from enveloping leather and resembling sandals or moccasins, early shoe designs were mostly soft.
Until the early Baroque period in Europe, although fashions and materials differed between social classes, women’s shoes and men’s shoes were very similar. The differentiation was made in the early 1800s. From then on, an evolution took place in the decades that followed, in that shoemakers began to improve comfort in the design and manufacture of shoes. Subsequently and until today, the evolution of footwear, whether feminine or masculine, has been shaped by fashion.
This exhibit gives a real panorama of the evolution of footwear from the 18th century to today, an artefact of the daily life of many human beings.
