The oldest shoe in the world is a simple leather lace up, 5500 years old, size UK 6. Stored — as it’s suggested you keep your shoes — in a cool and dry condition in a cave in Armenia, the shoe is unisex. It’s perfunctory, a leather thong holding together the two sides of the piece of hide it is formed from over the foot. Its colour is almost non-colour, earthy brown/green. As it was kept under a thick layer of sheep dung for 5500 years it’s hard to say if this is its original shade, as chosen by the designer, or if it’s been transferred from the original “drop”. Its gnarled and puckered shape translating, in modern shoe terms, to a Nike Hurrache, or something from Celiné’s spring/summer 18 collection.
On April 18, 2018, after a prolonged social media hiatus, the musician and polymath Kanye West tweeted, “Trend is always late”.
What he omitted to say was how late. I’m talking 5500 years late.
Previewing on his Twitter timeline, the genius man-child also shared with us some of the latest designs for his apparel line, “Yeezy”.
The four examples, a knee-high boot, a sneaker, a slide and bent perspex-heeled sandal together tell the tale of the story of man.
First — the simple, piscean shape of the Yeezy Boost Wave.
“Transparent”, the master commentated, but it’s not transparent, is it — that would be weird, seeing peoples naked feet walking round the shops. It’s snakeskin and mesh, the kind of combination that your mother warned you about. It’s also available in “Frozen Yellow” — perhaps that is a reference to Gen Zed Ched, or perhaps it’s a reference to Otzi The Iceman who lived… you guessed it, 5500 years ago! If Otzi lived now would he wear a Yeezy Boost?
Next to the sneaker stands a knee-high boot, but not like one we have known before. Cinched and crinkled, its length contorted on the wearer’s leg, engulfing the thick fabric of her trackpant with the ease of a snake swallowing a mouse. Such is the power of these boots they stand erect even when they are not being worn. Their fabric is taut and leathery, like the skin of Lindow Man, a 2000-year-old man found in a peat bog. His wife, Lindow Woman (who was found in the same bog), possibly would have worn a knee-high boot, had they been invented in 250 BC.
Next to it in the line-up is a bent perspex stripper shoe. This represents the future. Yes we have jumped 5000 years, but what is time when you are Kanye West? Its minimalism is striking — three pieces of plastic come to form a dangerous weapon, sexy and hard. “Transparent,” he commented, but not about this shoe, which actually is transparent. A professional estimate puts its heel at 4” — which by coincidence is the right height for a heel to turn your ankle and break one of your seven tarsal bones, or your talus or your calcaneus. The wearer of the oldest shoe in the world didn’t have these worries — but he lived 5500 years ago; he didn’t even have Twitter.
Kanye’s fourth and final (at time of publishing) offering is a flat, fat, foam slide, a blobfish of a shoe. It’s orthopaedic shark-tooth sole provides a level of purchase on the ground that an engineer would be proud of. It’s not sexy; if you wear a pair on a date you are going home alone.
According to the internet, corrugated foam “can deter birds, and rodents from entering or nesting”, if you use it in your roof. I am not sure if you would want to use them in your roof but I am pretty sure these shoes will deter birds.