Life on Foot: Fashion Heritage Walking Tour

This summer, everyone is talking about shoes. From the new shoe exhibition, Pleasure and Pain at the V&A, to the wealth of Sophia Webster sample sales being held in Mayfair (whose shoes also appear in the V&A) to the scandal surrounding women not being able to wear flat shoes to Cannes film festival - shoes are the talk of the town.
In celebration of yet more London shoe exhibitions - Camper Shoes at the Design Museum and the display RAYNE Shoes for Stars at the Fashion and Textile Museum - both the Design Museum and the Fashion and Textiles Museum have come together to explore the history of London shoes and the fashion heritage of SE1, with a walking tour of London’s oldest leather making district.
Following a 45 minute tour at the Fashion and Textile Museum (that includes their other current exhibition, Riviera Style), walkers will be taken to Bermondsey Street, a designated London conservation area that retains its historical architectural character from the days of leather and wool production, before touring the Design Museum.
The history of Bermondsey 
Bermondsey Street owes its growth to the leather trade; elevating itself from slum to wealthy industrial centre with the arrival of industrial plants, docks and immigrant housing. All the necessary components for the expansion of the trade could be found in Bermondsey, being placed near enough to the open countryside and the London butchers to get the animal hides and enjoying a constant supply of water and cheap labour, as well as finding oak bark for tanning close at hand. In 1792 a third of the leather in the country came from Bermondsey, and the area was redeveloped during the 19th and 20th centuries following the growth in river trade and the arrival of the railways. This is the rich world into which walkers on the Life on Foot: Fashion Heritage Walking Tour will step.