A life on foot -Design Museum Tour -more preparation

It's been interesting (and diverting) to do some more preparation for a personalised Design Museum -Life on Foot highlights tour:

A striking exhibition

I'm hoping to be able to communicate my own take on the concept which will include something about  the History of being on Foot, some of The Art that's reflective of the activity and the business side of things in respect of Spanish company  Camper.

History

My 'angle' here was partially triggered from hearing (on the radio I think) that until around 200 years ago shoes were made with a single 'last' (i.e. there was no difference between left and right shoes) - looking further into it I found too that shoes specifically for women did not become an item in Europe  until the 18th century.

I also found some other  great shoe facts here  from Albert Tu (and here's his rather foot-icentric Flickr account) .

Tu who is part of CasualMaxx shoes  has some great photo's of footwear the 'rat slippers' being rather special and here's one of his shoe facts

Six-inch-high heels were worn by the upper classes in seventeenth-century Europe. Two servants, one on either side, were needed to hold up the person wearing the high heels.

Triggers for discussion

Art

The walking side of the project lead me to look at writers - Will Self in particular who is a great walker who brings it into some of his work  (who mentions the situation-ists too) and British artist Richard Long  who has made many works that have drawn inspiration from his walking.

Commerce

The exhibition is about both Camper shoes and walking and for the Camper side of things I want to be able to talk about production, marketing and the Camper brand.

Other points of interest (I hope) to include around this are items on the design of some of the Camper stores by Japanese design guru Oki Sato who studied architecture and now has his own design outfit called Nendo - Oki talks about the New York store in 5th Avenue and how he used models of shoes to help acoustically improve the customer experience and how he sees it  furthering the brand.

Sato has worked on several of the shops in key Cities including Moscow and Tokyo - Camper are fortunate that as a private 'family' company they are able to make decisions that are not purely short term financially driven ones - it even carries over into their advertising.

An example of the risk the company can take in its advertising