My collection

Q: Why did you collect these items?

A: I believe that ones shoes reflects themselves and says a lot about them. I collected my shoes because I thought it would be interesting to see how I have developed in terms of style, personality and as a source of reflection upon my own history and memories.

Q: What is your collection?

A: My collection consists of all my own shoes.

Q: Which is your favourite shoe in your collection? Why?

A: Unsuprisingly it is the more recent shoes that are my cur-rent favourites, most notably being the silver shoes. I think its because it reflects my current style as it is formal yet fun which reflects my current status.

Q: What can you do with it?

A: Obviously you use shoes to wear, to protect your feet, to fit ‘proper’ social require-ments, for style and to feel good or even confidence. Shoes are a means of travel, its difficult to walk on pebbles without them. In-fact shoes represent what kind of person you are. For example if your keen on sports you will have a large amount of sports wear shoes. If you work behind the office you will instead have formal shoes. However you may have both these types of shoes if you do both activi-ties. Shoes represent what you do, and visually repre-sent your personality. Are your shoes clean or dirty? Maybe this represents if your organized or not.

Q: How old does your collection of shoes range from?

A: The shoes in my collec-tion range from when I was 13 (2003) to the present day (2010). It was quite surpris-ing to see how many shoes I had between this time and it uncovered to me a lot about my self at different stages of my life.

Q: Which shoes did you most frequently wear? Why?

A: Well I think its clear to see that I wore the green con-verse shoes the most. Actu-ally I found that depending on the physical condition of the shoes it represented several things. Physical conditions of ones shoes may represent obviously how many times it has been used. It can rep-resent how old it is, or even represent what the shoes were used for or wear it was worn. For example muddy shoes may reflect that the wearer has been off road etc. If it is clean and fresh, then perhaps it is new, or maybe it could be old but is used for only special occasions. But going back to the ques-tion, I probably wore the green converses the most because it was comfortable, and easy to wear since there were no laces.

2003

Q: What else have you learnt from your collection?

A: I found it was incredible how I have changed both physically and mentally. In terms of physically I found the soles of al of my shoes all indicated that I have a certain walking habit. All of my soles indent inwards indicating se-vere weight imbalance. Inter-estingly when I was younger I had a walking problem where by I walk inwards, and the shoes reflect this. I also noticed that as I got older so did the appearance of the subtleness of my shoes.

My earlier shoes were ec-centric and bold, but recently they have become less-so. This reflects perhaps my transition from a juvenile to a young adult, and its some-thing we can all relate to. Shoes also represent what type of climate the wearer is situated. For example in a hot climate, you might expect people to lighter and thinner footwear, such as sandals, whilst in a colder climate you can expect heavier thicker footwear such as trainers or boots.

2010