In The Event That...

You Need to Justify Another Pair of Fall Boots

by Monica Weymouth

Rest Your FeetOpening reception Wed., Nov. 5, 5-7:30 p.m., runs though Dec. 12, Leonard Pearlstein Gallery, 3215 Market St., 215-895-1029, drexel.edu/westphal

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Whether you've got a closet full of Louboutins or swear by Old Navy two-for-$5 flops, you're in an intimate, long-term relationship with shoes. Not that you have much of a choice if you want to live in Philadelphia, land of melting asphalt and never-ending February, of Monday morning Khyber sidewalk goo and the Berks stop.

"They're something we can't escape. You can't not wear shoes in modern-day society," says Clare Sauro, curator of Drexel's historic costume collection. "But people are a lot more playful with shoes. It's the area of our wardrobes where we allow ourselves a bit of fun." "Rest Your Feet," an exhibit presented by Drexel's Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design, takes a look at our evolving and peculiar relationship with footwear, from high-fashion pumps to '70s ski boots to faux sneaks. Included will be Roger Vivier, Salvatore Ferragamo, Prada and Christian Lacroix designs from the Drexel collection, the Art Museum and — we can't believe they've been hiding this on Race Street — the Temple School of Podiatry's Shoe Museum.

In addition to shoes, the show will feature 10 design-forward chairs, which you and your feet might be more interested in if you trumped around in metal-spiked, 1950s Delman Venetian pumps.

Sauro, who in her former position as assistant curator of accessories at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology oversaw more than 4,000 hats, has some favorites after spending the past couple of months surrounded by shoes. A pair of silver-and-black silk vintage Ferragamos are a definite prize, but it's a pair of ankle boots by Sorosis Trademark Luxuries that get her excited. Gold with intricate glass beadwork and fasteners, they were made in 1905 — a time when their owner would have worn a floor-length dress. "Those," says Sauro, "were just for her."