“Tell me how you walk, I’ll tell you who you are”
Exhibition at the MAD (Museum of Decorative Arts)
Exhibition at the MAD (Museum of Decorative Arts)
The EXPO “Marche et Démarche”
- WE LIKE: great exhibition on 7 centuries of shoe history
- AGE: from 10 years old
- DATE: until March 22, 2020
- PLACE: Museum of Decorative Arts (Paris 1st)
Marche et Démarche, une histoire de la chaussure : accessoire de mode ou instrument de torture ?
- 7 centuries of shoe history, 450 models on display to question the status of this essential everyday accessory
- Did you know that in France, the daughters of the nobility bandaged their feet to make them thinner? That the Indians had soles specially designed not to crush insects? That Chinese babies wore slippers decorated with tiger heads to protect themselves from evil spirits? That the differentiation of the right and left feet in the shoe only dates from the Second Empire?
- “Marche et Démarche. A History of the Shoe” is not a chronology of the shoe from Antiquity to the present day nor a panorama of the great shoemakers, explains Denis Bruna, curator of the exhibition. We were interested in the history of the shoe in its context, i.e. walking. »
- The idea for this exhibition came to her when she discovered a size 33 and extremely thin Marie-Antoinette shoe . How could a 37-year-old woman slip her foot into such a small shoe? “The aristocratic women of the eighteenth, nineteenth and even the twentieth centuries didn’t walk, they had to stay idle at home,” replies Denis Bruna.
- The shoe has a direct impact on our walking and movement. We don’t walk the same way with a pump or a moccasin. The walk and the walk are a reflection of our origins and social backgrounds.
- A very fun moment of the exhibition is the fitting room where you can test 8 models made by the shoemaker Fred Rolland. Some are particularly dangerous, such as the vertiginous pints (wedges popular between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries used to protect clothes from mud), so there are parallel step bars to which you can hold on to avoid falling!
- We admire all types of shoes: dance, tennis, running, (evolution of sneakers), Charlie Chaplin’s shoes, the boots worn by Neil Armstrong when he took his first steps on the moon, the shoes resulting from the collaboration between Christian Louboutin and David Lynch, the extravagant (importable) models of contemporary designers
- Some are works of art, including “the shoes of the god Hermes” in the room dedicated to “singular shoes”, a winged pair made entirely from the debris of mobile phone screens by the artist Juliette Miséréré.
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