Powerful? Practical? Crippling? Comfy? Whatever your taste in footwear, it’s certain to be reflected in The Bowes Museum’s major summer exhibition

HOT on the heels of the acclaimed Yves Saint Laurent exhibition, The Bowes Museum, in Barnard Castle, has secured another major fashion coup. It is the only UK venue outside London that will stage Shoes: Pleasure & Pain, which opens on Saturday, June 11, in its award-winning Fashion & Textile Gallery.

Taking the themes of transformation, status, seduction, creation and obsession, it features over 200 pairs of historic and contemporary men’s and women’s shoes by 70 named designers, alongside fantasy footwear such as the Swarovski crystal Cinderella slipper created for the 2015 Disney movie, and the ballet shoes made for by Moira Shearer as she danced to her death in the 1948 tearjerker The Red Shoes.

The famous feathered Jimmy Choos created for Carrie Bradshaw will also be on display, as will the Adidas ‘Brooklyn’ football boots sported by David Beckham, and Kylie Minogue’s ‘Tail Light’ sandals.

However, there are shoes worn by unknown people which are just as spectacular, which affirm the agony and the ecstasy of footwear throughout 2,000 years of history. Take the tiny Chinese Lotus shoes at just three-inches long, made for bound feet, exquisitely decorated with silk and sequins, excruciatingly painful yet still being produced in the early 20th Century. Among other fashionable footwear were chopines – a type of platform shoe popular in continental Europe from the 15th to the 18th Centuries. Originally used as a protective overshoe, their loftiness reflected the importance of the wearer; the higher the chopine, the higher the status, with some reaching almost impossible heights. Then there are silver sandals called paduk, a traditional extravagant wedding gift to Indian brides. The height of the platform may seem a little excessive to us, but they served to make the bride stand out among the crowd so she could be admired by those who attended.

The exhibition also includes a pair of leather and suede platform heeled sandals, c 1945-49, worn by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, who was patron of The Bowes Museum Friends for 40 years until her death in 2002, made by the prestigious UK company Rayne of London.

Shoes, more than any other item of clothing, arouse strong feelings in the wearer. Some women say they feel “powerful” in heels, others feel “sexy”, partly because of the way they tilt the body and affect the movements of the body. Shoes inspire passion and women – and some men – build up vast collections of shoes that they are unlikely to ever get round to wearing.

Even if they do, they may not want to wear them more than once. Included in the exhibition are teetering skyscraper heels that make useful activity an impossibility. But that is rather the point. These are shoes for posing, for people who can hail a chauffeur to transport them from A to B without the need to walk there like ordinary mortals. They indicate a certain social standing and show that they belong to an exclusive circle. The same has been true throughout history and the increasing height of heels has been one of the ongoing engineering trials for the shoemaker.

The Pleasure and Pain exhibition is divided into five specific themes:

• Transformation – will present shoes that are the things of myth and legend

• Status – will reveal how impractical shoes have been worn to represent privileged and leisurely lifestyles

• Seduction – shoes representing an expression of sexual empowerment or a passive source of pleasure

• Creation - how they’re constructed, the beautiful craftsmanship, supply and demand

• Obsession - the joy and fascination of collecting/owning/wearing

Here Design, whose client list includes the V&A, Fortnum & Mason and Nigella Lawson, have been drafted in to design the exhibition at The Bowes Museum. “They are high-end London designers, and we are working with them to produce what we believe will be a fabulous interpretation of this subject,” says the Museum’s Keeper of Fashion & Textiles Joanna Hashagen. “As the shoes will be exhibited thematically, not chronologically, each section will be a visual cornucopia of different shapes, styles, materials and colours. They are presented as very beautiful objects, many telling fascinating stories.”

  • Shoes: Pleasure and Pain, is at The Bowes Museum, from June 11 to October 9, before touring internationally to the US and China. Tickets are on sale via the museum’s website at thebowesmuseum.org.uk, where there is a direct line on the homepage and exhibitions page. They can also be purchased from ticketmaster.co.uk/venueartist/453005/2206180.