Sometimes Friday Shoe History Corner includes shoes that are for sale to any and all comers. But in many of those cases (like Mrs. Henry Ford’s riding boots here), the prices aren’t easy to swallow.

Well, if you dream of owning a pair of historically-styled shoes, your day may just have arrived.

Fugawee is a company that makes custom shoes for men, women, and children that range in period from the French and Indian War to the Civil War (roughly mid-18th century to mid-19th century, if you’re fuzzy on the dates).

They use historically accurate lasts (some of which come in lefts and rights, some of which come straight… ergonomic design came about later) to make shoes that are high quality replicas suitable for any of your period footwear cravings.

Want a pretty Civil War/Victorian era ladies boot? Look no further than the Victoria with its pretty stitching details.

And it’s only about $80! For a leather boot!

In the mood to style yourself like The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere? Then these sleek riding boots are just the ticket (about $250).

I’m not a fan of the boots-over-jeans look, but I have to admit, these would look pretty hot with a modern outfit or a historical reenacting one.

Or if you want to play dress up like a well-to-do lady, then check out the options for brocaded shoes, where you choose your last and send in your own fabric (and $180, which is still pretty damn cheap for made-to-order shoes), and they’ll send you back a shoe like the courtly Jennifer.

The website is a bit difficult to navigate, but the merchandise seems to be high quality indeed, and even their most expensive pairs are a hell of a lot cheaper than shelling out for actual vintage shoes. And, of course, these you could actually wear!

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Van Gogh often painted shoes, especially old shoes, which to him symbolized the whole universe of the wearer–his pains, sorrows, hard labor, tiredness at the end of the day.

Vincent Van Gogh. Old Shoes. July-September 1886.

Vincent Van Gogh. Three Pairs of Old Shoes. 1887.

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The first Manolo Blahnik shoe, sketched in 1971.

Via Manolo Blahnik Drawings

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American white kid side-laced boots, unlabeled,c. 1850-55.

“Side-laced boots were always shown laced in a ladder fashion using a single lace, but the woman who originally owned this pair used a more practical cross-lacing style. Her practicality did not extend to buying boots wide enough to fit her foot as the dirt on the side attests.”

- From Jonathan Walford, “The Seductive Shoe.”

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One of the tourist attractions we took in while Shoesense was in Seattle was the Underground Tour. The dusty underground tunnels were not much to look at. Thankfully we had a wonderful, humorous tour guide who was able to captivate and introduce us to Seattle’s rich history. The tour ended in Rogue Alley whereby we came upon the subject of today’s shoe history corner.

Shoesense mentioned this already, but Nordstrom the department store actually started off as a shoe store. The picture below is of the Wallin and Nordstrom Shoe Store, founded in 1901 (John Nordstrom is pictured in the front left). The shoe store was located on 4th Ave and Pike Street, not far from where Nordstrom’s flagship store is located today.

The story of John Nordstrom is particularly interesting. Nordstrom hailed from Sweden. When he arrived in New York, at the ripe age of 16, he had a whopping $5 in his pockets. Nordstrom headed west to make his fortune in the Alaskan gold fields. With a little luck, Nordstrom earned enough money so that he and his Alaskan friend, Carl Wallin, could open a shoe store.  By 1959, that store which would grow into the largest independently owned shoe store in the nation before eventually transforming into the publicly traded department stores that we know today.

For more company history, check out Nordstrom’s website.

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