Women from the Ankle Down: The Stories of Shoes and How They Define Us

Author(s): Rachelle Bergstein

Fashion & Jewellery

What is it about a pair of shoes that so enchants women of all ages, demographics, political affiliations, and style tribes? Part social history, part fashion record, part pop-culture celebration, "Women from the Ankle Down" seeks to answer that question as it unfolds the story of shoes in the twentieth century. The tale begins in the rural village of Bonito, Italy, with a visionary young shoemaker named Salvatore Ferragamo, and ends in New York City, with a fictional socialite and trendsetter named Carrie Bradshaw. Along the way it stops in Hollywood, where Judy Garland first slipped on her ruby slippers; New Jersey, where Nancy Sinatra heard something special in a song about boots; and the streets of Manhattan, where a transit strike propelled women to step into new cutting-edge athletic shoes. Fashion aficionado Rachelle Bergstein shares the stories behind these historical moments, interweaving the design innovations and social changes that gave each one its lasting significance and appeal. Bergstein shows how the story of shoes is the story of women, told from the ankle down. Beginning with the well-heeled Suffragettes in the 1910s, women have fought for greater freedom and mobility, a struggle that exploded in the 1960s with the Women's Liberation Movement, and culminated in the new millennium with our devotion to personal choice. Featuring interviews with designers, historians, and cultural experts, and a cast of real life characters from Marilyn Monroe to Jane Fonda, "Women from the Ankle Down" is a lively, compelling look at the evolution of modern women and the fashion that reflects-and has shaped-their changing lives.


Product Information

"If you could glimpse the passing parade of the last hundred years or so from behind a slightly raised curtain, you'd have a pretty good idea of what's going on in this richly anecdotal history of shoes."--Amanda Lovell, More Magazine

Rachelle Bergstein graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in English Literature at Vassar College. Upon graduation, she moved to Brooklyn where she worked as a cocktail waitress before setting into an entry-level job at a literary agency; she has worked in publishing for the past seven years. Women from the Ankle Down is her first book.

General Fields

  • : 9780061969614
  • : HarperCollins Publishers Inc
  • : HarperCollins
  • : 0.646
  • : April 2012
  • : 229mm X 152mm X 26mm
  • : United States
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Rachelle Bergstein
  • : Hardback
  • : 412
  • : 391.413
  • : 304