100 Shoes ... craziness

 

Yves Saint Laurent shoe, 2004

 

Manolo Blahnik boots by Damian Hirst, 2002

 

Ankle boots and pattens, 1825-30

 

Victor platform sandals, c. 1940

 

Alberto Dal Co’ shoe, 1958

 Beth Levine mule, 1962

"100 Shoes" (The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Yale, $25) is not a collection of fashion’s most vertically daring heels, despite the Vivienne Westwood platforms on the cover (and a preface by that stilt walker Sarah Jessica Parker). Instead it’s a brisk but dazzling 500-year shoe survey, booting the idea that foot fashion needs to be grounded: Moccasins were huge in Georgian England; American tango boots in the 1910s laced up like Grecian sandals; and that late-’60s prototype by Beth Levine — it kicks off the shoe slideshow above — seems to have come from a different planet.