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| - I know how girly and typical this is going to sound, but bear with me while I declare my absolute and mad love for shoes. True love. No passing fling here. My shoes are in The Container Store plastic boxes to create universality in my closet and to let each pair know how much I love them. Flats, heels, wedges and boots. I. CANNOT. HAVE. ENOUGH. I could reference Carrie Bradshaw here for comparison, but you understand what I am saying.
On my last day in Toronto, I was told by the lovely Joni Hubred-Golden (Hi Joni!) about the museum and immediately reworked my plans to make a stop before heading to the airport. I am nothing if not committed to my love of shoes. (One could note that this love should have alerted me to knowing about this museum before my last day in Toronto, but I could not conceive of such a wonderful thing. I was blissfully surprised and my belief in my travel karma was confirmed.)
Showing up a little before they opened (and a little before the young field-trippers) at 10am, they recommended that I start on the ground floor and work my way up to the sneaker exhibit on the top floor. I dutifully followed directions.
Walking around and seeing some of the almost 10,000 pairs of shoes on exhibit here (covering hundreds of years and many different cultures), I have never in my life had so many people (mostly employees and museum volunteers) look at my shoes in my life. I started to walk differently after awhile. Longer strides and all. Pointed-toe. I think I started the five basic positions of ballet. They all needed to know with whom they were dealing.
The ancient Egyptian's tiny sandals, the Indian's jeweled flats and China's embroidered slides were there. The Tudor's rigid metal boots were there, too.
Some shoes were ceremonial and others were drinking cups (the Germans, of course), but what I found the most interesting were the stories connected to specific kinds of shoes.
From the museum's placard: In Judaism, according to Biblical law, when a man dies and leaves his wife childless it is the duty of his brother to marry his widow to perpetuate the family line. If the brother declines to marry his sister-in-law, the halizah ceremony is performed. The halizah shoe, which is the property of the community, is placed on the man's foot and in front of witnesses, the widow unlaces the shoe and removes it thereby releasing her brother-in-law of his obligation and she becomes free to marry whomever she wishes.
Well, I am a big fan of everyone marrying whomever they wish and having the halizah ceremony connected to footwear is interesting. There were also slightly less binding pieces of shoe information like: did you know that bootleggers made shoes that, when tracked in the snow, appeared to be going in the opposite direction to avoid detection? Clever.
And now, I satisfy your curiosity by letting you know that Bieber made his way in. Well, his sneakers did. You just KNEW Bieber was going to sneak his way into this museum.
In a little musican-focused section, they had a tribute to some (use your own adjective) artists. They included:
Ella Fitzgerald
Elvis Presley
John Lennon
Sir Elton John
Madonna
Barbra Streisand
Sarah McLachlan
and Justin Bieber
I mean, really? Ok, Canada. Ok.
Next there were some clogs and some Zuni boots that I definitely wanted to steal. I just pictured myself goading you like Catherine Banning does to Thomas in the museum date scene in The Thomas Crown Affair.
TC: "What would you take?"
CB: "For my personal choice... that one."
TC: "You? You would like to have that?"
CB: "Why? Would you get it for me?"
A girl can dream. ANYWAY, next comes the kicks.
In their exhibit Out of the Box: The Rise of Sneaker Culture, I was reminded of that Missy Elliott MTV Cribs episode about her well-stocked sneaker closet and learned that Nike hasn't spent one marketing dollar on the Air Force 1 (white-on-white) mostly because they get free publicity through rappers. JayZ allegedly only wears his once before discarding them for a new pair... and I thought I had a shoe addiction.
Out of the Box did a nice job of keeping the entire museum current by basically throwing it into modern day (you don't count, Bieber) through:
Christian Louboutin's 2012 Roller Boats
Lanvin's Patent Toe-caps from This Year
Louis Vuitton x Kanye West Don's 2009 Collaboration
and PUMA x Alexander McQueen's Joust Boot.
Just lovely. Would I recommend coming here even if you are not a fanatic about this genre? Yes. Even if it is just to steal those Zuni boots for me.
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