My shoe-buying habit has always had a powerful effect on my personal financial condition (can I get a witness?). But who knew the nation’s financial condition could affect my shoe-buying habits?
According to Shoe historian Elizabeth Semmelhack, as our net worth gets lower, our fashion sense gets higher—at least when it comes to our heels. Fashionable heels got higher during the Great Depression, at the height of WWII rationing, through the oil crisis of the mid-70s—and now again, in the midst of the worst recession since then.
I sure can’t argue with Semmelhack, who’s shoe cred includes being senior curator of Toronto’s Bata Shoe Museum and author of Heights of Fashion: A History of the Elevated Shoe. But the big question on my mind is, simply, “Why?” What is it about hard times that drives us to higher fashion and higher heels?
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