Single shoes and individual lives: The Mill Creek shoe project

Abstract

Shoes are compelling symbols of individual lives and act metaphorically to suggest an intimacy with the person who wore them. In our modern world, celebrity affiliation with specific shoe designers - e.g., Sarah Jessica Parker and Manolo Blahnik - underscores the intimacy of this kind of artifact. In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy wrote, Now she knew all of them as people know one another in a country town; she knew their habits and weaknesses, and where the shoe pinched each one of them. The fit of a shoe is intimate information, and possessing knowledge of it suggests extraordinary familiarity. Maxims regarding the intimacy of shoes abound in modern parlance: If the shoe fits, wear it, Walk a mile in someone else's shoes. As artifacts, shoes carry the marks of the individual who wore them in many different ways, physically as well as symbolically. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009.