People wear shoes to protect their feet from hazardous conditions. Rough terrains, sharp jagged rocks, burning heat, freezing cold are some of the environmental reasons shoes were invented. But shoes have become more than a protective article, over the centuries shoes have evolved into status symbols. Shoes portray your social status, your occupation, your affluence, your sexuality and in some cases even your religion. Today’s shoes are more than a piece of protective clothing they are a personal item of a person’s persona.

A message can be transmitted by wearing a specific pair of shoes but in order for the receiver to understand the message they must first be schooled in translating these messages, if not the probability is that the message will be lost in translation.

By wearing the right pair of shoes in school determines whether you fit in with a particular group of kids from another. Wear a pair of Doc Martin Boots in an office environment sends out a completely different message to wearing the same Boots on a building site.

We have to understand that the types of shoes we wear sends out messages, we also have to understand that the message changes when a brand of shoe is worn and dependent on the brand the message can change yet again. The style of shoes might be saying I’m looking for a relationship but the brand says I’m looking for a specific type of personality to forge that relationship.

Fashion shoes are in constant flux, shoes change from season to season. Marketers spend millions in hard currency to educate us so that we can understand these types of messages by persuading us that this pair of shoes says you are athletic or this pair of shoes says that you are wealthy or this pair of shoes will make you sexy. Even if the workplace is a construction site, the type of shoes or Boots worn sends out a message of the type of construction worker you are, whether you are a brick layer or a carpenter or an architect. Kids in the playground, colleagues at work, acquaintances we meet in general educate us in interpreting these messages by the type of shoes they wear, by the type of shoes you wear and their acceptance of you. We subconsciously learn in this manner but if we consciously become aware of the shoes people are wearing, listen to what they are saying, we will learn that much faster.

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