In their rapacious desire to showcase their specialness, the ultra-rich have often turned to ridiculous fashion. With hindsight, those of us from less elite groups have been able to have the last laugh because we can see the trends of the rich from a broader perspective — the more fashion has moved away from the natural shape of the human form, the crazier it looks to us in retrospect.
And thus I introduce to you the Medieval poulaine, a shoe so awkward to wear that the men who donned them sometimes had to use string to tie up the ends so as not to constantly trip. Having developed in Poland in the 14th-century, they made their way around Europe among the hoi-polloi. It was a sign of wealth to wear poulaines precisely because of their impracticality — you obviously aren’t going to go plowing in these.
In a recent paper published in _The International Journal of Paleopathology, authors Jenna Dittmar and Piers Mitchell detail findings from an archaeological dig suggesting that aristocrats who donned poulaines risked more than just their future reputations for fashion faux pas. Comparing the foot skeletons of wealthy and poorer individuals from a Cambridge graveyard, it seems as though the poulaines gave their wearers painful bunions.
Drawing conclusions from 177 skeletons, the archaeological team noticed an increase from 6% to 27% of those suffering from bunions before and after the 14th-century divide. The bunioned feet had their front big toe bones pushed far out laterally, which would have made walking and other movement painful.
The Catholic Church recriminated wearers of the poulaines, and some governments tried to legislate against the shoe — but it was the fanciness, not the propensity for physical damage, that upset the folks in these institutions.
Source(s): _The Smithsonian Magazine_, “This fancy footwear craze created ‘a plague of bunions’ in Medieval England” by Nora McGreevy, June 14, 2021. Fashion Institute of Technology, New York City “Poulaine”, August 2020. Fashion History Timeline.
