No one who wore it could be in a hurry to get anywhere, nor could they walk very far. The most notorious example of this was the long-toed poulaine shoe, in which the thin, pointed toe could be as long again as the foot. This didn’t just mean making clothes and shoes from better quality materials, but wearing styles that made it obvious that the wearer didn’t do physical labour or even walk very far. ![]() It was also during the fourteenth century that fashionable clothing became important. It made the leather very fragile, though, so was presumably something only for the wealthy, for whom shoes tended to be more decorative than useful or hard-wearing Sometimes the spaces created would be filled with embroidery. Sometimes the leather was decorated by punching holes in it to make diamond-shaped openings, forming a lattice on the upper of the shoe. Alternatively, leather uppers could be decorated with scoring, patterning of the leather and embroidery. Shoes for the wealthy could have patterns scored in them in which the top of the leather was scraped away to reveal the suede beneath. They could be laced on the side or top, buckled, and they might be made with or without back straps. There were various ways of making sure that shoes didn’t come off. Over the course of the century this changed, at least in the shoes made for the wealthy. At the beginning of the fourteenth century there wasn’t even any difference between right and left shoes, other than that made by the wearer’s feet in use. Most shoes were very simple and men’s and women’s shoes were similar. It was stitched to the sole and turned inside out. A soft piece of leather – the upper – was placed skin side down on the last. Leather shoes were made by the turnshoe method. The leather was soaked in a solution that could include egg yolks, flour and potash. ![]() Tawing, on the other hand, was a process that made the leather softer and easier to stretch. Tanning changed the structure of the leather, making it last longer and less likely to decompose. In the fourteenth century shoes were mostly made from leather, which was often tawed, rather than tanned.
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