‘So Manly and Ornamental’: Shoe Buckles and Britain’s Eighteenth Century
Journal: The English Historical Review
Year: 2023

Abstract The shoe buckle of the eighteenth century is an alien object today. At the time, shoes were manufactured without fastenings and the buckle was purchased separately. This offered opportunities for decoration, particularly for men, whose shoes were otherwise plain and unchanging. Over the course of the century, buckles grew larger and more elaborate, reaching their apogee in the ‘Artois’ style of the 1780s. In the wake of the French Revolution, buckles came to be associated with effeminac