Vivian Jauregui on Crests, Shoes, and Volterra

Writing this blog makes me realize how quickly the weeks are going to fly by here in Italy. I can’t believe we’ve almost been here for a month! This week in theme sequence, Jana asked us to mind-map the object that we chose to bring to class. My object was one of my patent leather coach loafers. My mind-map lead me to a lot of different ideas, and tangents… but when asked to chose one physical idea or object, and one conceptual, it was easy enough to choose having considered my interests here in Florence.

For my concrete object, the golden loop on my shoe reminded me of another pair of shoes I own that have golden medallion with the flor di lis. Not only did this medallion directly remind me of the main symbol of Florence, but it got me thinking about emblems, and soon my thoughts turned to crests. Crests were perfect, because the kinds of crests you can find around this city embody the ornate and decorative qualities I wrote about in my previous blog. I also love how they are symbols for the families or groups they represent, and therefore incorporate my interest in visual communications. Talking to my classmates about my idea, my thoughts went to including modern-day emblems, or crests, and since I began with shoes my thoughts went directly to the emblems and symbols used by the top design houses: Louis Vuitton’s LV, Gucci’s G, Fendi’s F.. etc etc. I feel as though people sport them today as people would have sported their crest in medieval times (maybe it’s a little far-fetched, but I think it’s an interesting way of bringing it back to modernity).

As for my conceptual idea, I decided to go with “self-image.” It’s kind of odd how I arrived at it. My sister and I would always have conversations when went shopping about why women love shoes so much. One day she decided that the reason she loved buying shoes (and therefore [if you know my sister] why everyone loved shopping for shoes) was because no matter how she felt about her body (fat days, bloated days, bad hair days) her foot size never changed and was never an indication of her weight. Aside from this, it’s easy enough to arrive at the connection between shoes and self-image because so many women, and men, use shoes as status symbols, sex symbols, or symbols of their hobbies and interests. Not to mention the fact that different cultures have been known to wear different shoes, and historically royalty has had a huge effect on shoe types (the history of heels in explained on wikipedia, including this tid-bit: “The first officially recorded instance of the wear of high heels involved the 1533 marriage between Catherine de' Medici with the Duke of Orleans. She wore heels made in Florence for her wedding, and as a result, Italian high heels became the norm for ladies of the Duke's court in France.”) [yay, Florence!]

I’d also like to share how I went to Volterra this weekend with 7 other girls from our group. To say the least the experience was completely amazing… the sights were absolutely breath taking, and the city itself was an untouched paradise of stone buildings and crooked streets. The Palazzo dei Priori was a gold mine, too, for my theme of crests, and being so, I’m only uploading two of the many walls completely covered in crests. One of the best parts of the experience was that we could be ourselves in this city… there was no one to judge us for being silly American tourists, and we were able to have fun taking photos, without any deadly stares. We found a huge archeological park, too, and had amazing time just playing around there. Under the inspiration of Jennifer, we even made daisy chains for our heads. It was one of my best experience’s so far.

ps. sorry my photos are so low-res.. it was the only way I could get them up on Flickr reasonably quick

Ciao! - Vivian