Taiwan's vice president, Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), can often be found at many unlikely events, so it was hardly surprising that she showed up at yesterday's opening of the exhibition Shoes in Fashion from 200 to 2000 urging women to achieve greater things in life, while also likening the wearing of shoes to kissing the ground. Former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos would have been proud.
The exhibition undertakes a history of footwear, showing everything from pumps to poulaines, long pointy-toed armored boots once fashionable in Poland during the Middle Ages. From a pair of 20cm-tall velvet Venetian chopines from 1600, one can see that 1990s platform shoes hardly represent a recent phenomenon. In all, the show presents a lively combination of fashion, cultural history and scholarship.
All shoes on display come from the collection of Canada's Bata Shoe Museum, which boasts a collection of more than 10,000 artifacts related to objects adorning the human foot. The museum was founded by Sonja Bata, who developed her own interest in footwear after marrying a shoe manufacturer in her native Czechoslovakia in 1946. Part of her collection now comes to Taipei through a collaboration of her own museum, the Canadian Trade Office and the Museum of National History, which continues to support some of the most fascinating exhibits in Taiwan.
The exhibition will be on until July 22 at the National Museum of History, 49 Nanhai Rd., Taipei (國立歷史博物館，台北市南海路49號). Admission is NT$20.
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