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The Arts Intel Report

Shoephoria

Oct 7, 2021 – Apr 24, 2022
Assembly Rooms, Bennett St, Bath BA1 2QH, United Kingdom

Bath isn’t just curative waters, curved terraces, and the setting for two Jane Austen novels. It’s also the home of the Fashion Museum Bath, one of the world’s finest collections of costume and textiles. Its latest exhibition “Shoephoria!”—and who doesn’t get high on a new pair of shoes?—charts the evolution of footwear over the last 300 years. The show offers up 350 pairs, the oldest dating to the 1690s: red-velvet mules. And there are plenty of celebrity pieces here, shoes worn by Queens Mary and Victoria and ballerinas Margot Fonteyn and Alicia Markova. From 1967 there’s Noel Coward’s monogrammed velvet slippers, and from 2015 a pair of Dr. Martens boots digitally printed with a scene from Hogath’s The Rake’s Progress. —L.J.

Installation view of “Shoephoria,”2021. Courtesy of the Fashion Museum Bath.