Page:Costume, fanciful, historical, and theatrical (1906).djvu/106

70 simplest charms are easily realised by the pictures on these pages, where, too, are evident examples of the chopine and the clogs, whose pas de fascination were executed under such disadvantages. High heels were conspicuous everywhere, but it was left to Italy to have the honour of popularising the most ridiculous fashion of the chopines or



stilted clogs, which asserted themselves at different heights, mostly outrageous, beneath a covering of gauffered leather, a commodity which looks like the modern poker-work. The idea of the chopines was imported from Turkey to Italy and thence to England, where, however, it is well to mention, it received but the scantiest consideration. The height of the chopines served to indicate rank, and some were of such monstrous inconvenience that they necessitated their wearer being supported