User:Chopine
Hello.
I'm the online marketing consultant for the Bata Shoe Museum. As such, I'll be requesting edits of any changes I make to the Bata Shoe Museum's Wikipedia entry, to make sure they're sufficiently neutral.
So what's a chopine anyway?
This is not an official Museum curator's description, but here's my informal attempt at explaining these fantastically impractical shoes: A chopine is a shoe with a high platform - so high it makes today's platforms look like ballet slippers. We're talking 30 inches or more in extreme cases. Women wearing them had to be supported by servants in order to walk. Chopines first appeared during the Renaissance, but they were still being worn by some wealthy women at the beginning of the 17th century. The fashion started in Venice, then spread to France and England.
(Sources: (1) 'Shoes', by Linda O'Keeffe. New York: Workman Publishing, 1996. ISBN 0-7611-0114-4. (2) The Bata Shoe Museum's 'Chronicles of Riches' exhibition, 2007-8.)