Once upon a time, there was a commercial which emphasized the importance of shoes. The young man in overalls who has never worn shoes because his feet can’t breathe finds that Hush Puppies are different, and cries out that now he can go to school “I can BE somebody!” (I do not have a Hush Puppies postcard; you’ll have to settle for this one from Keds, also responsible for some classic television.)
Rather than rail against fickle fate, which has made it impossible to watch this young man’s revelation on the Interwebs (did NO one save a copy?) we will consider the role of shoes on postcards of the past. Our postcard artists were NOT going to let this important article of fashion elude their notice, especially if their point was making fun of a well-dressed man. This chap cannot catch a break from the cartoonist, head to pointed toe.
This chap’s clothes veer off in an entirely different direction, just as unfortunate as the one preceding. He has dressed for excess, and those shoes are a worthy part of that effort.
One problem, of course, is that we must look past the change in fashions when considering cartoons of an earlier day. Although this gent is rather oddly proportioned, the clothes he wears would not have raised many eyebrows, back in the day. He is simply wearing spats, a decorative element once meant to both add color and possibly save parts of your shoes and socks from the mud (mostly the adding color bit.) So these are NOT caricatures of shoes (except in size, which is a fine old joke for some other blog.)
Likewise, though this IS a caricature of modern fashion, it’s meant to be a comment on the new dresses with side slits. The SHOES are not part of the joke.
Similarly, these well-worn droopy high-button shoes are merely a mild exaggeration, something fun to draw to illustrate what COULD have been construed as a racy innuendo. (You wouldn’t pack so personal a belonging of someone else unless you were really well-acquainted.)
As in this wildly popular shoe joke. I have had three different versions of this little exercise in drawing shoes so other people could draw the conclusion. Once again, though the shoes need to be prominent, making them caricatures would have gotten in the way of the gag.
In this well-drawn bit of fashion commentary, the shoes are not the first, or even the second point of the picture. (Either the wordplay of the caption, or the slam against the Hobble Skirt comes first, THEN the lovingly depicted legs in black stockings, and then the bird with the sly dig, and THEN the shoes, which are still part of the joke, being ill-designed for walking on winter ice.)
As time passes, of course, the interest of the viewer will change. The political joke has faded into the realm of dusty humor (we are comparing Papa to the nation of Turkey, which offered to give foreigners the boot.) We’re more interested now in the design of this handsome bit of footwear.
And THAT sort of thing is more or less eternal, as shown in this postcard from about half a century later, featuring an assortment of boots available in Arizona. (I’m sure the boot from the previous postcard is in here somewhere. Keep looking.)
Blogsy Babbles 