Walk this Way

From silk boudoir shoes created for the 1867 Paris Exposition to leather spectator pumps signed by the 1941 New York Yankees, Walk this Way: Footwear from the Stuart Weitzman Collection of Historic Shoes features more than 100 striking pairs of shoes. This exhibition presents footwear – spanning nearly 200 years – from the collection of iconic shoe designer Stuart Weitzman, and businesswoman and philanthropist Jane Gershon Weitzman.

An integral part of our everyday lives, shoes not only protect our feet, but tell stories centered around women’s labor activism, the fight for suffrage, and the sexual revolution. Production and consumption of footwear serve as pathways toward discovering the vital role women played in history. Women take center stage as this exhibition explores a variety of shoes, including those worn by suffragists as they marched through the streets, Jazz Age flappers as they danced the Charleston, and starlets who graced the silver screen in the postwar era. In exploring the process of shoemaking, the role of women in one of the first mass production industries, and their participation in the forming of organized labor, the exhibition presents the story of the shoe as it has never been told before.

This exhibition has been organized by The New-York Historical Society.