nike football cleats with colored strap

Today the world's most widely available shoe: hundreds of used trainers for sale in a public square, Fez, Morocco, 2007
Design drawing for a typical 20th century European-style man's formal shoe with toecap

A shoe is an item of footwear evolved at first to protect the human foot and later, additionally, as an item of decoration in itself. The foot contains more bones than any other single part of the body, and has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in relation to vastly varied terrain and climatic conditions. Together with the proprioceptive system, it is what makes possible balance and ambulation.

Most of the time there have been people, most people have not worn shoes. Until recent years, shoes were not worn by most of the world's population—largely because they could not afford them. Only with the advent of mass production, making available for the first time the cheap flip-flop-type sandal, for example, has shoe-wearing become more or less universal.

Appearance and design have varied enormously through time, and from culture to culture. They may, for example, have very high heels or no heels at all. Contemporary footwear varies in style, complexity and cost, from the most basic sandal, via high fashion shoes for women sometimes costing thousands of dollars a pair, through to complex boots specially designed for mountaineering or skiing. Shoes have traditionally been made from leather, wood or canvas, but are increasingly made from rubber, plastics and other petrochemical-derived materials.

« nike cleats
nike huarache 2k4 football cleats »