Pumps

Durer

1958 · leather · Costume Institute

The Osgood collection comprises 179 objects, chiefly fashionable Italian-made women's shoes dating from the years 1954 to 1958. The shoes were collected by Charline Osgood, Director of the Kid Leather Guild, a trade organization of American kid leather manufacturers. Highlighting the use of kid leather in footwear, the collection provides a fascinating and enticing view of high-style European shoe design from the period, representing many of the finest and most inventive Italian makers. Osgood presented this shoe, one of the few French specimens in the collection, as an example of Modern Functionalism: it is constructed with only two seams, and incorporates an anatomically rational asymmetric design. The leather is turned over in an attractive and sophisticated manner at the throat to produce a two-tone upper. She noted, however, that the design was extremely difficult to manufacture.

Artist

Durer

Date

1958

Medium

leather

Culture

French

Department

Costume Institute

Credit line

Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Charline Osgood, 1960