If the Shoe Fits:
Footwear, Identity and Transition
The Project
The ‘If the Shoe Fits’ project was funded for three
years by the Economic and Social Research Council
(ESRC), one of the UK’s major funding councils.
Between 2010 and 2013 we have been talking
to people in Sheffield about their shoes in a bid
to develop a new way of understanding how our
personal and social identities are formed and lived
out. Our shoes become one with our bodies and
affect our posture and mobility, our capacity to fit in
socially, as well as perform skills such as climbing
and dancing. You might say ‘Shoes R Us’, yet they
have their own lives to lead too, falling in and out of
favour, or becoming fashionable or useful sometimes
for many years. As such they provide an excellent
route into people’s everyday lives, as well as
special moments: taking to our feet for the first time,
graduating or getting married.
Rachel Dilley, one of our team of four researchers
has met with around 90 people for small group
discussion as well as working for a whole year with
a smaller sample of 15 people. In the course of the
year, our 15 research participants have been listing
and photographing all their footwear, recording
all the times they change their shoes and why,
taken Rachel shoe shopping with them, keeping a
personal shoe scrapbook, letting Rachel film them
carrying out an activity of their choice – in their
shoes, and meeting for three in depth interviews.
Meanwhile Alexandra Sherlock, our postgraduate
researcher, has been working with Clarks shoes,
finding out how all the images of shoes we see
around us connect with our experience of buying
and wearing our shoes.
Eve Wood from SheffieldVision became a temporary
fifth member of our team and has spent time with
people who took part in our project, as well getting
out and about in Sheffield’s world of shoes. Working
collaboratively with us she has interpreted the
questions and the findings from our project in the
documentary ‘If the Shoe Fits’. The film is about the
meaning, symbolism and function of women’s shoes
and follows the stories of two of our participants,
as well as including interviews with other Sheffield
residents and leading experts in the field.
The research team – Rachel Dilley, Jenny Hockey,
Victoria Robinson, Alexandra Sherlock, would like to
express their gratitude to the ESRC for funding the
project, to the Department of Sociological Studies
at the University of Sheffield for hosting it, and to all
their research participants, and the institutions and
organisations some of them represent, for giving so
very generously of their time and letting us into their
shoe lives for a while.
Don’t miss...
1st - 14th July 2013
The Winter Gardens, Sheffield City Centre
The ‘If the Shoe Fits’ travelling exhibition
has now arrived from the Northampton Shoe
Museum.
17th July 2013
ICOSS, University of Sheffield
The ‘Dressed Bodies’ Symposium will
showcase national and international
scholarship on clothing, shoes and other bodily
accoutrements.
For more information and to register visit:
www.sheffield.ac.uk/iftheshoefits/symposium
For more information
Website: www.sheffield.ac.uk/iftheshoefits
Blog: www.iftheshoefits.group.shef.ac.uk
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/If-theShoe-Fits/113979782020225?sk=wall