To prove that ‘anything can be a shoe’ is Antwerp’s Fashion Museum (MoMu) new goal, which they try to achieve with their current exhibition "Footprint. The Tracks of Shoes in Fashion". Showcasing over 600 shoes, we’re able to find worldwide famous names, like those of Roger Vivier and Manolo Blahnik, but also unknown ones such as Jan Jansen or Tokio Kumagaï –the real inspiration, though, for nowadays designers– and of course some of the most iconic Belgian representatives, like Martin Margiela, Dirk Bikkembergs or Ann Demeulemeester.
It is, definitely, a more emotional approach to shoes than usual, as they’ve even been regrouped under a variety of concepts such as Decadence, Surrealism, Nature or Glamour, following the many ways designers use their shoe-shaped imagination.
The exhibit has been curated by shoe collectors Geert Bruloot and Eddy Michiels, and what you can see displayed is a mix between their thirty years collection (owned by MoMu) complemented with over 500 pairs of shoes from designers’ archives, shoe and fashion museums, and private and ethnographic collections. An exciting journey through groundbreaking shoe designs from the 20th and 21st centuries that is able, not only to tell the evolution of world’s history, but also to inspire the designers of the future.
The exhibition will be running until February 16th 2016, and a homonymous books containing over 30 interviews by Geert Bruloot with famous shoe and fashion designers –including the first exclusive interview with Martin Margiela himself–, can also be purchased.
