WHITE SHOES

Formal dress or costume, white shoes are a statement. 

White signifies an indoor life. In the 17th century, white shoes were worn at court. The absence of stains suggested access to servants. Lengthening the leg already covered with a white stocking, they were made of satin or leather and had high heels. The paleness of the shoes, like that of the complexion, suggested a sheltered life.

From the 19th century onwards, white shoes become associated with summer. They’re worn at the seaside, attracting the eye and reflecting the light. The aim is to highlight a seasonal elegance. 

The advent of tennis shoes makes white a mark of leisure. The white shoe takes on a rubber sole. Called ‘buck shoe’, in buck or suede, it marks belonging to a certain leisure class. It is then sold with a ‘buck bag’, ensuring uninterrupted spotlessness. ‘White shoe’ becomes a nickname for moneyed Americans. Defending Harvard against the charge of elitism, the journalist Martin Mayer writes: ‘the university isn’t even white shoe !’

Naturally luminous, these shoes lend themselves to spectacle. Pat Boone becomes ‘the kid in the white bucks’, Fred Astaire wears them with his suits: suggesting agility and lightness, the white shoe becomes an object of desire rather than a status symbol. Rally around it many young Americans. Some take pleasure in sullying their pair. Elvis Presley makes the transition: an icon of transgression, an icon in white shoes.

It is on the other side of the Atlantic that the white shoe finds new life. Taking on its newfound rock importance, british music culture makes the white shoe the mark of a genre. Always white, sometimes patent, it becomes a black-heeled chelsea boot or a platform thigh-high - the Beatles and David Bowie. 1967 is the space age. In 2017, Colette and Dr Martens collaborate: the shoe is white, with a blue rubber sole.