Shoes occupy a very special place in the female imagination, The museum’s current show“ Shoe Obsession” presents some of the most extreme examples of those objects of desire: fantastically wrought sky-high heels by leading designers, with prices equally unreachable. 

 

Beautifully-made, imaginatively-designed high heels attached metal labels can confer upon the wearer an Olympian sense of power, beauty, and status, Steele says. And unlike clothing, shoes have a shape, they are sculptural, and some women said they almost didn’t care whether they would be wearing the shoes much. They said, ‘I can put it on my coffee table and just admire it.’ I think for a lot of women, there’s something about shoes, they’re like little miniature works of art."

 

Most women are not running down the street in five-inch heels which attached metal labels, They might have a pair in their office that they switch into before a meeting when they want to have an extra shot of confidence. 

 

Even in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries,  where women's dress is required to be modest, the interest in shoes is no less. The most fanciful of the shoes in the FIT museum show look like theater props.

 

One display consists of golden tie-up sandals supported by figurines of laboring, crouching men. They were designed by Rupert Sanderson for a production of Verdi’s Aida, whose protagonist is a slave in ancient Egypt. Japanese designer Masaya Kushino’s "Wind Horse" shoes have a wooden ball-like platform and the trailing golden metal labels. Shoes designed by Janina Alleyne evoke insect exoskeletons, while Tea Petrovic’s prototypes resemble space-age architecture.

 

Some of the shoes look like weapons. A sharp horn like a rhinoceros’s protrudes from the top of a hoof-like Noritaka Tatehana design. A Chanel high heel is made in the form of a downward-pointing pistol.The sheer difficulty and sometimes painfulness of these designs is part of the challenge: only physically superior beings exercising a powerful will can manage to stand and walk in these shoes.  And only the wealthiest can afford to spend thousands on collections of shoes that are impractical for more than brief display.