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Materials: Black silk satin, silver
sequins, gray sequins, cut steel beads, painted metal shoe button, tan
kid leather, cotton twill vamp lining.
Label: Stamped in gold, "Schuhwarenhauser S. Reschovsky Wein" ("Reschovsky Shoe Store,
Vienna").
Condition: Excellent. The centers of the
button on each ankle strap is missing a glass jewel.
Measurements: L, 9.5"; Wd, 2
15/16"; Heel, 2 3/4". Size 8 apx..
Comments: Reschovsky is a Jewish
name, possibly of Russian or Ukranian origin. It is also the name of the
shoe store in Vienna where these elegant evening shoes were originally
sold. Theirs must have been a very successful business - 3 shop
locations in Vienna are listed inside the shoes. Two major European
centers of decadent nightlife during the 1920s were Vienna and
Berlin. Cabarets were jumping with Bohemian flappers, jazz lovers and
style setters...These over the top shoes may very well have partied in
many of the infamous Viennese nightclubs during that era. In the
carefree, wild 1920s few foresaw Hitler's coming rise to power and what
would happen to the Jewish people and their businesses in Austria.
These shoes are much more than a beautiful pair of expensive, sequined
footwear; they represent a piece of lost history.
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