Dress & Drinks: Bata Shoe Museum | Conversations on Dress| Costume Society of America

Join us this month as we speak with Elizabeth Semmelhack, Director and Senior Curator of Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto. “Footwear and its production are linked to so many things from science and technology to gender politics and social inequities,” says Semmelhack, who is here to remind us to stop overlooking what is arguably the most essential component of our wardrobe. In shoes, you will see “that what we wear is dictated by a wide range of things that have less to do with personal taste and more to do with larger social and economic structures.” Semmelhack’s robust background at Bata Shoe Museum alone is a direct reflection of the enormity of what shoes have to teach us – she has curated exhibitions on depression era footwear, sneaker culture, men in heels, and shoes & politics, to name only a few. Currently, she is working on an exhibit entitled: Exhibit A: Investigating Crime and Footwear. She speaks to the media almost daily about shoes, does “endless primary research,” and discovers something new in footwear “every day.” Prior to Bata, she studied painting, printmaking and Japanese literature at Bennington, and then went on to do a terminal MA in Western Art History at Tufts and Japanese language at Cornell. While working on a PhD in Japanese Art History, Semmelhack was focused on ukiyo-e and the intersections of gender, fashion, popular culture and economics. It is entirely possible this is the first time you are hearing the words ‘footwear and politics’ spun out i