Hooves in the City: Notes on Animalistic Footwear

In rural Latvia one winter, alongside Eliza Baker at a self-sufficient school, I found myself in rooms overflowed with donated clothing, piled taller than us. Our task was to create animal costumes for the children’s end-of-year play. Armed with a list of their tiny shoe sizes, we spent hours amidst the textile alps, gathering footwear and real fur. Fur coats were sacrificed, their pelts cut and adhered to the shoes.

Photographs of costumes, Latvia. Published in Island Magazine.

We birthed the ‘feet’ of a donkey, an owl, a meerkat, a bee, and a bunny.

Shortly thereafter, back in the motherland, we fashioned sheepskin-clad boots for a lamb costume, a creation ultimately photographed for the final edition of New York City’s irreverent newspaper, The Drunken Canal.

Lamb costume, published in The Drunken Canal.

Since then, I have succumbed to the allure of numerous furred, animalistic shoes, wearing many pairs to their death.

My fantastical wish is to one day find Iris Schieferstein’s horse hoof shoes in an op shop or on TradeMe. Fourteen years ago, Schieferstein, sourcing her hooves materials from a Berlin butcher and hollowing them out, unleashed these uncanny, unsettlingly wearable objects. More recently, Alexander McQueen’s Autumn/Winter 2024 collection resurrected this visceral aesthetic with a hoof boot.

Iris Schieferstein’s horse hoof shoes, via virtualshoemuseum.com

If I close my eyes I can already conjure the sensation of walking the pavements of Dunedin, the rhythmic clop clop clop of a horse’s hoof striking the concrete. This soundscape evokes images of horses on cobblestone streets. In my mind’s eye I see the enduring imaging of Lady Godiva, enveloped in her flowing hair, astride her horse, nude. Perhaps it all awakens a deep-seated ancestral memory, a faint echo of a world where the percussive beat of hooves was an intrinsic rhythm of daily life.

Rotary Photo Company Ltd. (c. 1907). La Milo as Lady Godiva at Coventry [Photographic postcard]. National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. Retrieved from https://www.portrait.gov.au/portraits/2016.29/la-milo-as-lady-godiva-at-coventry; Collier, J. (c. 1897). Lady Godiva [Painting]. Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry.

The year 1967 witnessed the unveiling of the Patterson-Gimlin film, a grainy piece of footage purportedly capturing a large, bipedal figure striding through the forests of Northern California, igniting an enduring debate but, for some, ‘proving’ the elusive existence of the Yeti.

Patterson, R., & Gimlin, R. (1967). Patterson-Gimlin film [Film].

While the film remains fiercely contested, the 1970s saw brands like Diadora, Technica, and Siberia embrace the myth, crafting ‘Yeti boots’ swathed in goat fur.

These artifacts frequently resurface on eBay. Flicking through their listing photographs conjures visions of the mythical Yeti inhabiting its remote, snow-bound landscapes.

Advertisement for ‘Big Foot’ boots, 1970s; Manuela Boraomanero and Emanuela Beghelli on holiday in the Italian ski resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo [Photograph by Slim Aarons], 1976.

The discovery of a carved wooden foot in the attic of Raymond L. Wallace, a man who claimed to have encountered Yeti footprints, further convoluted the already enigmatic narrative. This reminds me of Maskull Lasserre's shoe project, featuring soles mimicking animal footprints. This work explores the notion of leaving behind animal ‘traces’ within urban environments. This juxtaposition can evoke a sense of the uncanny, introducing an element of the wilderness into an inherently domesticated setting.

Rubert, D. (Photographer). (2002). Dale Lee Wallace of Toledo reveals the original feet made from Alderwood his Uncle, Ray L. Wallace, used to make the now-famous bigfoot tracks in 1958 [Photograph]; Lasserre, M. (2012). Animal Footprint Shoes [Artwork/Sculpture].

The uncanny is vividly illustrated by pieces like Balenciaga's Reptile sneaker, where reptilian forms emerge from beneath jeans. Vivienne Westwood's Animal Toe shoes directly reference fauns and lion paws. Margiela’s Tabi boots, with their distinctive cloven split toe, echo the hooves of goats, deer, and cows, blurring the lines between human and beast.

Westwood, V. (2000). Animal Toe shoes [Shoes]. 'Summertime' collection, Spring-Summer 2000; Margiela, M. (1989). Tabi shoes [Shoes]. Maison Margiela debut collection.

To encase one’s feet in the dense, shaggy, undeniably animalistic texture of goat fur is to invite a subtle metamorphosis, to deliberately blur the lines between human and creature.

It is a playful embrace of the fantastical, a tangible connection to the realm of myth, most notably the satyr.

Tiepolo, G. D. (c. 1771–91). Satyr Leading a Centaur, Who Carries a Club, Bow and Quiver, Outside the Walls of a City [Artwork/Painting]. Italian.

The satyr is invariably depicted with the cloven hooves, legs, and horns of a goat. Perhaps, in wearing shoes that subtly allude to such forms, we are subconsciously seeking a fleeting sliver of the myth for ourselves.

The Rick Owens x Moncler fur boots, with their generous swathes of goat fur sculpted into exaggerated and theatrical forms resemble the lower limbs of some mythical creature. Eighty years before Owens’ Moncler collaboration, Elsa Schiaparelli, the mistress of the bizarre, dared, in 1939, to unleash her Monkey Hair Shoes.

Owens, R. (Designer). (FW23). Rick Owens x Moncler Fur Boots [Boots]. Moncler; Schiaparelli, E. (1939). Monkey Hair Shoes [Shoes]. Designed in 1939.

Yesterday, on Dunedin’s main strip, George Street, I complimented a woman on her fur thigh-high boots. She told me they were pony-hair. At the barn’s dance, she clopped away.

We want to transform.
We want to be myths.

Me, wearing furred boots, Parnell, Auckland. Photograph: Eliza Baker.

All good (furry) things,

Constance

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