World at Your Feet

The Bata Shoe Museum has an extraordinary collection of more than 14,000 artifacts, dating from as far back as 4,500 years to the present day. Founded by Sonja Bata, the museum is one of the largest shoe collections in the world and is a wonderful source of inspiration for designers across the globe, including Manolo Blahnik, Christian Louboutin, Nicholas Kirkwood, and Sophia Webtser, among others.

The one hundred shoes featured in this volume are among the most important in the collection and display a fantastic array of styles. Creative director and senior curator Elizabeth Semmelhack uses these treasured examples to discuss society, culture, gender, fashion, and other facets of history that are revealed through the study of footwear.

The Bata Shoe Museum is located in Toronto, Canada, in a gem of a building designed by Canadian architect Raymond Moriyama. Since its opening in 1995, the museum has welcomed more than two million visitors to more than forty exhibitions. It is also renowned for its ground-breaking research and is consistently celebrated as one of the top fashion museums in the world.