Noritaka Tatehana, Lady Pointe shoes, 2012, The Museum at FIT
"That one is so hot!" exclaimed a 10 year old little girl, her sticky hands and warm breath fogging up the glass case housing seven pairs of heels and platforms from Givenchy and Alexander McQueen. She was lost in a well ordered labyrinth of tall vitrines, spotlights above, shoe specimens all around. There were plenty of comments to be heard in the vast black space. Whispers, deadpan exaltations, a whole dictionaries worth of interjections, memories, opinions. Apparently people have lots to say
about shoes. Particularly women's shoes. And why shouldn't they? Lately their heights, shapes and manner of
ornament have reached even further into the realms of cult status. So far even, that the word "obsession" following the word "shoe" seems a commonplace catchphrase.
The Museum at FIT's latest grand scale exhibition "Shoe Obsession" displays examples of this feverish love for elevated toe tappers, and the variety here is quite impressive. Covered in exotic leathers, dyed suede, beaded and studded, buckled and buttoned-- I'll admit, my heart went aflutter when I entered the main gallery. Co-curated by Dr. Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of MFIT, and Colleen Hill, associate curator of accessories, along with Fred Dennis, senior curator of costume, the exhibition aims to examine "our culture's ever-growing fascination with extravagant and fashionable shoes." It notes significant cultural influences such as Sex and the City for eliciting a broader awareness of fashionable shoe designers, and showcases the private collections of a select group of female collectors, among them Baroness Monica von Neumann, Lynn Ban and Daphne Guinness.
If the curatorial intent here is to delve into our psychic attraction to outrageous shoes, the exhibition itself only skims the surface, giving the viewer more eye candy in the form of stilettos and clodhoppers than substantive accompanying texts. The show's matching tome, published by the Yale University Press, nicely fills in these cracks with essays by Steele and Hill, profiles of private collectors, and over 150 color photographs. As a living, breathing exposition of artifacts, however, both the small and large galleries (the latter seen below) are both simple and breathtaking. With so many styles seemingly floating atop steel totems, encased in glass, the "ooh!" factor certainly enraptures the audience, who for a moment allow time to stop as they glide from case to case, wide eyed and curious, noses up against the glass, pulses accelerating.
If the curatorial intent here is to delve into our psychic attraction to outrageous shoes, the exhibition itself only skims the surface, giving the viewer more eye candy in the form of stilettos and clodhoppers than substantive accompanying texts. The show's matching tome, published by the Yale University Press, nicely fills in these cracks with essays by Steele and Hill, profiles of private collectors, and over 150 color photographs. As a living, breathing exposition of artifacts, however, both the small and large galleries (the latter seen below) are both simple and breathtaking. With so many styles seemingly floating atop steel totems, encased in glass, the "ooh!" factor certainly enraptures the audience, who for a moment allow time to stop as they glide from case to case, wide eyed and curious, noses up against the glass, pulses accelerating.
Main Gallery, "Shoe Obsession", Image courtesy Museum of FIT
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