What they looked like
The toe extended far beyond the wearer's toes and was stuffed with moss or tow to hold its shape. On the longest versions, the tip was tied to the leg; otherwise, it could catch on things. The shoes offered no protection and no comfort at all.
- 12th c.The fashion arrives in Europe and is initially fairly restrained.
- 14th c.The toe grows longer, and stuffing and ties to the knee or ankle appear.
- 15th c.Cities and rulers limit the length, often according to the wearer's social position.
- 16th c.The opposite shape takes over - a wide, blunt toe.
The bans are worth reading carefully: they restricted not the shoes themselves, but the length of their toes according to social position. In other words, toe length served as a status signal, and authorities felt that signal needed regulating.
A status symbol works when it is hard to fake. Discomfort is the price someone who has to work with their hands and feet cannot afford.
What the bones revealed
Most interestingly, this fashion left a trace in skeletons. Researchers compared burials from a single English city across different centuries and found that during the period of narrow, pointed shoes, the share of people with a characteristic big-toe deformity rose sharply.
It was most noticeable in the burials of townspeople and clergy - those who could afford fashionable shoes. Among rural burials from the same period, the share was significantly lower.
There was a second finding: people with this deformity more often had signs of fractures typical of falls. The explanation is simple and quite predictable - it is easier to lose your footing in unstable, narrow shoes, especially in old age.
It is also worth noting how the fashion ended. The change was quick and went in the opposite direction: the toe became wide and blunt, in some places wider than the foot itself. The mechanism stayed the same; only the signal changed - the discomfort simply shifted to the other extreme.
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Sources
- The rise in the frequency of big-toe deformity in late-medieval English burials has been linked to the spread of narrow, pointed shoes
- restrictions on toe length were introduced in a number of European cities