A moan for St. Valentine

Real feet left, proper shoe shape right

I am presently breaking in a pair of new slippers, a process which reminds me that most of the people who make footwear do not pay enough regard to the shape of the foot. Generally speaking, shoes are far more symmetrical than feet are, with rounded or pointed toe ends which do not provide space for the big toes, which are about as far off the centre line of the feet of which they are part as they could be.

So apart from being regularly annoyed when I have a new pair of shoes to break in, which this question of shape makes far worse than it need be, I wonder why this might be so. I don't suppose that the people who make shoes are particularly stupid; they know perfectly well what shape feet are. So what are they up to? Do they know from experience that people like to pretend to have smaller feet and more symmetrical feet than is actually the case?

Even expensive running shoes from the likes of Nike suffer from this defect, shoes for people whom you might think particularly cared about the state of their feet. Maybe what I am missing here is that Nike is really into fashion shoes, the fashion being to look as if you can run. And then there are the gentlemen who do dreadful things to their feet by wearing winkle-pickers and the ladies who do dreadful things to their feet by wearing very high heels.

Is this some obscure relic of the Chinese taste, in days gone by, for binding the feet of women? Days when very small feet on ladies were considered very becoming, sexy even? Maybe, for some obscure biological or psychological reason, feet are a focus for strange customs - including the fairly common custom of ladies to own ridiculous numbers of pairs of shoes.

On the other hand, my memory of the feet of equestrian knights in armour, the sort of thing to be found in the Wallace Collection in London or the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge, is that some of them at least are foot shaped. Perhaps if you are to spend quality time in steel shoes which do not stretch much, it is sensible to have them foot shaped, whatever others might think about appearances.

PS 1: those seeking solace in St. Valentine proper can go to the Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin in central Rome, perhaps kilometre south east of Vatican City, and right on the Tiber. There you can pray to the skull of the man himself. Through a window, naturally; you are not supposed to actually touch it. Are the faithful young lovers of Rome queuing up to do the honours as I type?

PS 2: most of the better images of feet turned up by Bing and Google came from people who expect you to pay for your image, people like Dreamstime and Shutterstock. Which is not usually the case, although it is fair to say that quite a lot of the better quality images in general do come from such people. Another puzzle.