Shoes

E. Pattison

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

It is a sad reality that many of the extraordinary manifestations of fashionable dress do not survive. Frequently, what has come down to us is not the extreme expression of a time as represented in fashion plates, but rather the slightly more muted quotidian example that most-generally privileged-women actually wore. On occasion, there are fortunate exceptions, such as these shoes. In the high Neoclassical style, they represent a Regency fantasy of Greco-Roman footwear. The color is astonishing for its freshness, and is generally seen only in the hand-tinted fashion engravings of the time rather than in actual artifacts. Worn with a white mull dress, perhaps with a tinted underdress, the shoes would have been a vivid accent or, if paired with a colored silk gown, a noticeably refined coordination.

The Costume Institute

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Costume Institute's collection of more than thirty-three thousand objects represents seven centuries of fashionable dress and accessories for men, women, and children, from the fifteenth century to the present.

Metropolitan Museum of Art