From brocade opera pumps to satin strappy sandals, chandelier-heeled evening shoes to increasingly spindly stilettos, shoes in midcentury Vogue are a delight for the eyes and the feet! Even beyond the shoes themselves, the graphic design and layouts of footwear features in Daves’s Vogue, created by legendary Art Director, Alexander Liberman, provide a wealth of visual excitement.

Join Rebecca C. Tuite, author of 1950s in Vogue: The Jessica Daves Years, 1952-1962, at the Bata Shoe Musem in Toronto, for an illuminating talk on fashionable footwear in American Vogue during the editorship of the oft-overlooked, Jessica Daves.

One of only seven editors in chief in American Vogue’s history, Jessica Daves has remained one of fashion’s most enigmatic figures. Diana Vreeland’s direct predecessor in the role, it is Daves who first catapulted the magazine into modernity. When Jessica Daves became editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine in 1952, she began a decade-long effort to elevate the world’s most influential fashion magazine to new standards. With a firm belief that “taste is something that can be taught and learned” and an even firmer conviction in the magazine’s “high regard for the best,” Daves led a charge for excellence in the pages of Vogue. In fact, when Jessica Daves started her career at Vogue in the 1930s, she had been responsible for shoes in the magazine. As such, this talk will celebrate yet another underrated aspect of Daves’s personal and professional life: shoes.

Drawing from the Vogue archives, fashion historian and writer Rebecca C. Tuite tells the complete story of footwear in Daves’s Vogue, examining the magazine’s coverage of footwear trends and designers, the relationship between shoes and other accessories, and the presentation of these styles in the pages of the world’s most influential fashion magazine.