poulaines
selection of medieval shoes, Museum of London
a glittery shoe, my own collection
This style of shoe is now called a d’Orsay flat, the cutaway sides reveal the instep. They don’t require a pointed toe, though all the ones I own have them. It’s not a new style; once they were called poulaines, from an old French word meaning from Poland, specifically Krakow - so says the Museum of London, from whose website my first photograph is taken. I remember the last time I visited the museum, how I stood looking at these shoes for ages. I might have been wearing a similar pair as I did so; I have several and much admire the look they give my long and narrow feet.
Apparently ‘Medieval people associated extravagant fashions, and pointed shoes in particular, with alternative or deviant sexualities’ (Museum of London website).
This raises an interesting question for me — which came first, the fashion, or the meaning of it, how did it come to be that everyone knew what was meant by a shoe? How long did it take before everyone knew that this is what they meant? I imagine them, the sign and the signified growing in tandem, like climbing vines around the same pole.
It’s funny what everyone knows without thinking about it.
I grew up in a northern town as rough as paint on the north side of a barn; it was not the custom to be so blatant. I wear my pointed shoes for the sheer joy of it; when I want you to know, I’ll just look you dead in the eye.