ADFAS: High Heel Heaven

Shoes convey a wide range of meanings associated with fashion, style, personality, sexuality, class and gender.  New studies have given us awareness of the personal, social and sexual connotations attributed to footwear and created by footwear.  Different shapes and colours for men’s and women’s shoes today revolve primarily around the construction of gender difference.  Many of these gendered distinctions developed in the so-called ‘long eighteenth century’.  Why do men and women’s shoes look so very different today?  Learn about shoes, mobility and history, from renaissance platform chopines to Sex and the City ‘limousine’ shoes. 

Dr Peter McNeil is Distinguished Professor of Design History at UTS.  From 2008-18 he lived and worked in Scandinavia, including academic appointments in Sweden and Finland.  His acclaimed book ‘Pretty Gentlemen’, on the 18th century fashion world, was published in 2018.  Peter has worked on fashion exhibits with many communities and museums and is Past President of the Art Association of Australia and NZ, and Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.