A chopine is a type of women's platform shoe that was popular in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. Platform shoes are Shoes Boots or sandals with thick soles often made of cork plastic rubber or wood (wooden-soled platform shoes are technically also As a means of recording the passage of Time, the 17th Century was that Century which lasted from 1601 - 1700 in the Gregorian calendar Chopines were originally used as a clog or overshoe to protect the shoes and dress from mud and street soil.

Chopines were popularly worn in Venice by both courtesans and patrician women from ca. Venice ( Italian: Venezia, Venetian: Venesia or Venexia) is a city in Northern Italy, the capital of the A courtesan in mid-16th century usage referred to a mistress or trained artisan of dance and singing especially one associated with wealthy powerful or upper-class 1400-1700. Besides their practical uses, the height of the chopine became a symbolic reference to the cultural and social standing of the wearer; the higher the chopine, the higher the status of the wearer. High chopines allowed a woman to literally and figuratively tower over others.

During the Renaissance, chopines became an article of women's fashion and were made increasingly taller; some extant examples are over 20 inches (50 cm) high. The Renaissance (from French Renaissance, meaning "rebirth" Italian: Rinascimento, from re- "again" and nascere Fashion refers to styles of dress (but can also include cuisine literature art architecture and general comportment that are popular in a culture at any given time Inches redirects here To see the Les Savy Fav album see Inches. ^[1] Surviving chopines are typically made of wood, or cork, and those in the Spanish style were sometimes banded about with metal. Wood is hard fibrous lignified structural tissue produced as secondary Xylem in the stems of Woody plants notably trees but also shrubs Cork material is a Prime-subset of generic cork tissue, harvested for commercial use primarily from the Cork Oak tree Quercus The M acro E xpansion T emplate A ttribute L anguage complements TAL, providing macros which allow the reuse of code across Extant pieces are covered with leather, brocades, or jewel-embroidered velvet. Leather is a material created through the Tanning of hides and Skins of Animals primarily Cattlehide The Tanning process Velvet is a type of tufted fabric in which the cut threads are very evenly distributed with a short dense pile giving it a distinct feel Often, the fabric of the chopine matched the dress or the shoe, but not always.

According to some scholars, chopines caused an unstable and inelegant gait. Women wearing them were generally accompanied by a servant or attendant on whom they could balance themselves. ^[2] Other scholars have argued that with practice a woman could walk and even dance gracefully. ^[3] In his dancing manual Nobilità di dame (1600), the Italian dancing master Fabritio Caroso writes that with care a woman practiced in wearing her chopines could move “with grace, seemliness, and beauty” and even "dance flourishes and galliard variations". Fabritio Caroso da Sermoneta (1526/1535 - 1605/1620 was an Italian Renaissance dancing master. The galliard ( gaillarde, in French was a form of Renaissance dance and music popular all over Europe in the 16th century ^[4] Chopines were usually put on with the help of two servants.

In the fifteenth century, chopines were also the style in Spain. Spain () or the Kingdom of Spain (Reino de España is a country located mostly in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Their popularity in Spain was so great that the larger part of the nation's cork supplies went towards production of the shoes. Some argue that the style originated in Spain, as there are many extant examples and a great amount of pictorial and written reference going back to the 14th century ^[5] Chopines of the Spanish style were more often conical and symmetric, while their Venetian counterparts are much more artistically carved. That is not to say, however, that Spanish chopines were not adorned; on the contrary, there is evidence of jeweling, gilt lettering along the surround (the material covering the cork or wooden base), tooling, and embroidery on Spanish chopines.

There are a great deal of cognates of the word chopine (chapiney, choppins, etc. ), however neither the word chopine nor any word similar to it (chioppino, cioppino, etc) appears in either Florio's 1598 or 1611 dictionary. The Italian word, instead, seems to be "zoccoli," which likely comes from the Italian word "zocco," meaning a stump or a block of wood. Florio does, however, use the word "chopinos" in his English definition of zoccoli.

Sources

• http://www.aands.org/raisedheels
• http://www.geocities.com/fashionAvenue/1495/1600.html
• http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~ebernhar/index.shtml
• http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/08/eustn/hod_1973.114.4a,b.htm
• http://www.dwb.be/2004/3/3.html

References

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