The Red Shoes has a strong moral warning for its young readers to avoid sin, such as vanity and pride. It also warns them about disobedience to their elders. Red shoes are a symbol of rebellious women. Here's why you need a pair.
Those red shoes become his obsession and his death. Once she puts them on, Karen starts dancing frantically and can't stop. With a life of their own, the shoes take her to the forest and end up scratching and hurting her. Finally, exhausted and bloody, Karen ends up in front of the town's executioner's door.
As punishment for her sins, Karen asks the executioner to cut off her feet and shoes instead of cutting off her head. He does that and the feet with the red shoes fly away. The story continues a bit, but the moral seems to be that red shoes symbolize a dark desire, the vain nature of Karen, which at the time was considered a great sin. Red shoes are considered the emblem of “wild and rebellious women”.
But they also represent their enduring power as women, which is conventionally considered to be for men only. When a woman wears a pair of red shoes or boots, she seems to want to scream out loud that she is a powerful and free woman. In addition, it could automatically send a message of authority, energy and freedom to everyone. One day, Karen discovers a pair of red shoes peeking out from under a princess's dress and is carried away by the desire to have a pair.
In a well-known fairytale entitled The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen, a poor, orphaned girl named Karen was adopted by a rich lady after her mother died. And Miuccia wasn't the only one thinking of vermilion footwear, from bright red velvet in Simone Rocha and crimson open-toe boots in Victoria Beckham to flashy heels in Hellessy, red shoes went up and down the runways around the world. Kate Bush's 1993 album, The Red Shoes, also pays homage to the dark frenzy at the heart of Andersen's fairytale, and its lyrics tell a similar story of a young woman who will be forced to “dance” until her legs fall off. David Duchovny played a man who published an advertisement in which he was looking for women to present his stories of temptation and passion after dissociating himself from his engagement after his girlfriend started an affair with another man who sold him red shoes.
Whether it's King Louis XIV of France in the 17th century posing in his red high-heeled shoes and declaring that only nobility could do the same, or the glimmer of a modern Louboutin sole that represents the wealth of the user (and his ability to walk in dizzying heels), red shoes are still a dominant option. And of course, it's about resources, since throughout much of history, the people most likely to wear red shoes were those who were rich. But there is something else, besides The Wizard of Oz, about a woman who wears a pair of red shoes to spontaneously transmit the message of freedom and power to the world. For you, however, it's likely that the meaning of red shoes is closely related to the Wizard of Oz.
In 1939, that's probably when Dorothy touched her red shoes three times and said there was no place like home. Unable to resist his vanity, he gets his adoptive mother (who can't see the color) to buy him red shoes. In addition, Pope was also the one who conventionally wore slip-ons or red leather loafers from around 1484.
