MEMORIES:
How winkle pickers got their strange name… ah, there’s a tale! The winkle – the source of the dye for the color periwinkle – is a kind of marine snail that attaches itself to larger objects in the ocean. The sharp, pointed tool used to pry winkles off a surface was called, naturally, a winkle-picker. The rest is footwear history.
The pointy-toed dress shoes first became popular in the early 50s among the “Teddy Boys,” a group of disaffected, rebellious London teens. Their angrily pointed black oxfords with crepe soles diverged dramatically from the gently rounded toe in vogue at the time. But the severely tapered upstarts soon became a signature style of the decade. The women’s version sported a short stiletto heel and narrowed to an extremely sharp point at the toe.
Though never the most comfortable of shoes, winkle pickers with their exotic shape have come back into fashion over the decades. A new generation got a look at the pointy-toed design when gothic style returned it to the front lines of fashion in the 80s.
