Even today, some people prefere to be barefoot and adapt themself to the environnement. If you are always barefoot, you will have a very strong and flexile feet that will transmit to your brain all kind of informations to control your posture and balance, the type and geometry of the ground. The foot have a very big nervous system, over 26 bones and joints that are all linked to muscles just to allow your boddy to stabilise. It's very good to be barefoot to allow the foot to take his place, allow free movement, rehenforce theses muscles, tendons and ligament and be stimulate by texture. You can see in this study the difference of a barefoot and shoe. For the protection shoe, you can see that we developpe shoe to respond the the environnement. Depending on the type of the environnement or the type of the activity, this shoe will follow a specific fonction so it will have specific properties. The personalisation of the shape will allow a better comfort, blood flow or a better stability dependanding of what you need to achive. The last one, the luxury. It was used to demonstrate the power and the wealthiness at the begining, but during time we saw all different reasons. Some of them like the Chopine, the specific shape of this shoe was to protect the fragile and luxurian clothing that a lady could wear. The higher was the shoe, the richer you were. In almost all of these exemples, the shoes who where made for a luxury purpose is changing the posture and the way we move. To take the same exemple, to walk with the chopine, the ladies need to have the hand of there maid or husband to be able to walk. The foot binding exist the foot needs to fit in these tiny very so much tiny show. It influences the balance and it's very hurtful but the small feet was a cultural beauty factor. Nowaday, in ours society, the high heel is dominent and it changes the posture to activate the posterior muscles chain and pointing out the chest. Some other like Christian Louboutins say that is ment to slow down the walk. I found very interesting these seperation, but what if I mix the word and try to found a new ways to look at it. I can explore a way to be barefoot to seduce and a luxury shoe for the performance and a protective shoe who procure a better balance. Let's see what can it be.
I take some key words from my moodboard and try to explore these 3 concepts. This barefoot luxury take me on a body painting road. Using the arts, the details and the theatrical act to be able to seduce. I was thinking of a relief painting that can be applied like the amazonian tribes at the beggining with the rubber tree or simply use prosthetic resine to modify partialy the shape of the foot so it can be elegant or provocatif depending of the occasion. If you use this technic in city, it will also change the way you walk. Because most of us uses shoe now, our muscles, posture and balance is not the same. If you walk on the street barefoot, you will feel everything under..rocks, sand, glass, cigarettes. You will (I think) slow down your walking and you will for sure put your feet differently on the ground to be more careful. In medieval time, they use the same technic. The shoe was a simple layer of leather. To walk in those you don't want to put the heel straight foward, but the front part because is softer. It will be a little bit like a tatoo but for walking.
