Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1886 — Reform in Shoes. [ARTICLE]

Reform in Shoes.

“We find,’’says the fa hionable shoemaker recently, as he twisted a porpoise shoe-string around his forefinger, “that w men have virtually discarded fashions in shoes, and I believe it is chiefly due to the newspapers. You r member four or five years ago, when high-heeled shoes were the thing? Well, everybody wore them, even the old women. I knew one little lady over eighty years old who wore high-heeled shoes t;nd slippers until she died. In order to make a woman’s foot look small the high heel was set forward until it was under the ball of the foot. There is no doubt but that sucn shoes were injurious, and that more than one woman has ruined her feet by wearing them. The newspapers made an outcry against the fashion, and the people came to their senses. “Do not Philadelphia women wear stylish shoes?” 4 ‘Yes, and they wear very expensive ones, too. But everything is changed now. There is really no set fashion in shoes. Women here are very sensible about their feet. As a rule they have small feet, and can afford to look to comfort combined with style. We rarely put a high French heel on a shoe now, except in the case of some one very short who is anxious to look tall. It is more the proper thing here than anywhere I know to wear low broad heels, set in the proper place on the shoe, and I don’t know of any street in any city where you see more stylish girls, feet and all, than you do on Chestnut street. But low heels are not all the improvements. Everybody must wear square-toed shoes now; in fact the fashionable thing to do is to wear the most thoroughly .comfortable shoe. Men are coming around to the same idea. Not even the dude thinks of cramping his feet now. They have come to the conclusion that women like men best who look as though they had something to stand on. — Philadelphia Press.