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
In the New York Times Op-Art piece, “On the Heels of a Recession,” Penelope Rowlands and Christine Berrie speculate that economic stresses sharpen our focus on gender identity, including in our fashion choices.
Semmelheck has a simpler explanation that rings a lot truer for me: “These little trifles can elevate one’s mood.” In plain language, wearing high heels makes you feel better.
What do you think? Do you crave high heels more when you can afford them less? Or are pretty new pumps the first thing to go when you downsize your shopping list? Leave a comment below to let us know.
P.S.: The day after the NYT piece came out, Leona Tannenbaum (author of Bad Shoes and the Women Who Love Them
Tannenbaum says we should have learned our lesson from—of all things—the aftermath of the World Trade Center attack of September 11, 2001, during which women had to remove their pumps and flee the scene barefoot.
I swear, sometimes I think the debate about high heels will never end.
To pump or not to pump, that is the question. What do you think? Leave a comment below.
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