cheap 18th century shoes

When doing historical costuming, it's always so hard to find shoes. There are quite a few wonderful shoemakers out there, but the prices are what you can expect from artisans doing a specialized craft. I plan on buying a pair of shoes from American Duchess one day, those shoes aren't too expensive, but the freight and customs double the final price. For my first events I used the pair of shoes I wear with my folk costume, but this summer I got to know all the things that are wrong with them. They are also a bit clumsy. Throughout the summer and autumn I was on the lookout for a suitable pair of shoes, whenever I visited the local second hand store. I wanted a pair of black or red shoes, and I mostly looked at the shape of the heel, I wanted something at least close to a classic pompadour heel.

original shoe

One day I stumbled upon these for 125 SEK.They had an ugly plastic buckle, but I started with removing that one. Then I discovered that the straps were asymmetric, one long and one short.

Straps folded

I cut off a piece of the too long strap, and simply used superglue to attach it to the shorter one. Then I folded both straps into the shoe and attached them to the side with more superglue.

 I threaded some nice ribbon in the loops that were formed from the straps, and voilà a pair of decent 18th century shoes. I can also change the ribbons whenever I want to match whatever I'm wearing.

There are no pics of the heels, and I like them because of the shape, but it's visible that they are built up from several layers of plastic. Still I don't think anyone is going to crawl on their knees and judge the shoes that closely. They still look better than my folk costume shoes toegether with my historical gowns.