If you love history and you love shoes, you must see this!!

The Bata Shoe Museum! Yes, a shoe museum!

I love shoes! I always feel like I am missing one pair, and I am sure I am not the only one. I also happens to love history, all kinds of history because it always tells you something about the present and maybe a glimpse of the future. Shoe is always a fashion thing, and you may think what is last season is gonna stay that way, but! NO! A lot of things are making a comeback! Prepare yourself!

This Shoe Museum for the curious is located in downtown Toronto, right on Bloor St and St.George St. One day, I was going pass the intersection after a day of shopping with my girlfriend, a painting displayed in the window caught my eye. Before that I have never heard of this museum for shoes. It was a painting  of a men wearing high heels, and he looked like a 1800s Royalty. I was puzzled and after I went home and searched about this place then, I've come to realize the men in the painting was  Louis XIV of France!! He was in red heels!

The building Bata Museum currently reside is designed by Raymond Moriyama in 1995. The shoe collection owner, also the owner of the museum, Sonja Bata requested Mr. Moriyama to create a "small gem of a museum" to hold her precious shoe collection to show to the world. The building is a five floor award wining architecture. The museum currently holds four exhibitions:

- Fashion Victims: The Pleasures and Perils of Dress in the 19th Century (opens June 18th)
- Collected in the Fields: Shoe Making Traditions from the World
- Beauty, Identity, Pride: Native North American Footwear
- All About Shoes: Footwear Through the Ages

I learned so much after I visited this museum. It is fun and you get to see a lot of weird shoes on display. There you can also see a lot of vintage brand name shoes on display. It is amazing.

Here are some examples from the Bata Museum website:

Sabatons, part of a complete suit of armour. German c. 1490's

Roger Vivier evening shoes embellished with silver thread embroidery and ostrich feathers for Delman‐Christian Dior, French, 1954. Gift of Valerian Stux‐Rybar, 1979.

For More Information About Bata Museum please visit: Bata Museum