By Heather Rockwood, Communications Associate
This is part two of a two-part series discussing the history of shoes and fashion. Read part one: Wedding Dresses & Shoes Before & After They Were White.
The manufacture of shoes was industrialized in the 19th century, but before the Industrial Revolution shoes were made by hand in workshops. Shoemaking was a specialized trade performed by many people working together in a workshop, not the single shoe cobbler we hear about in fairy tales like The Elves and the Shoemaker. Each person in the workshop had a specific job to do, from cutting the leather to forming the base of the shoe. Some shops could make dozens of shoes a week.
But don’t call them cobblers! Cobblers were not specialized or trained. The term was reserved for people looking to make ends meet. They would repair shoes, but the result was typically slipshod. Cobblers were usually illiterate and could be very poor. Shoemakers, on the other hand, were highly educated and well trained. They would have been offended if you called them a “cobbler,” as it would imply not only that they were lower class, but that their shoes would not be well made.
Workshops would keep fashionable daily footwear in stock, just like shoe stores today, so that a customer could walk into their shop and purchase shoes at that moment. It was less common and reserved for the pricier materials and the well-to-do customer, to have shoes custom made for someone. But shoes could also be imported, or sent back home from someone traveling abroad, like this letter from Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams shows: “The shoes you ordered, will be ready this day and will accompany the present letter. but why send money for them? you know the balance of trade was always against me.” And, apparently, Jefferson would not let Mrs. Adams pay for them.
Most footwear at this time was made to be worn with a buckle, like the wedding shoes of Rebecca Tailer Byles in the previous post about shoes. However, shoemakers did not produce buckles and they had to be obtained elsewhere. Most buckles were imported from England in the 18th century and had various styles. They could be used to dress for more formal occasions or for every day. The pair of buckles below is thought to have been worn by James Madison on formal occasions. These silver buckles are adorned with cut glass backed with tin foil, which would have made them sparkle.
The myth that shoes weren’t made to have a left or a right is not true; shoes were made to be in pairs that did have designated right and left sides, but it was the materials that were used to make the shoes that determined how they would be shaped. For instance, leather was used for shoes that were made to be worn daily. Once a pair of shoes had been purchased and worn, the leather would mold to the wearer’s foot. It would be very soft and comfortable and, as some sources say, even more comfortable than today’s shoes, which are made with plastics and do not mold to our feet in the same way.
I hope you learned a little more about shoes in the 18th and 19th centuries in these past two blog posts.
A selection of sources:
Buckle Up! (colonialwilliamsburg.org)
Two Nerdy History Girls: Crafting Shoes for an 18th Century Lady