What Is The Key To Choosing Period-Accurate Country Boots?

As a specialist in making handcrafted leather boots, tradition is at the centre of what we do, from the materials we use to the traditional handcrafted and small-scale factory manufacturing techniques employed to ensure that your footwear is not only long-lasting but also immaculately stylish.

Because of our own interest in traditional construction techniques such as the Goodyear welt, and how boot designs have evolved through the ages, we are naturally fascinated by how countrywear and especially boots are captured in period dramas.

Despite being a relatively small detail, it is a pivotal choice, but to explain why, it is important to know why period dramas so often fail to consider their footwear, which compromises are often made with footwear choices in film and television, and some top tips for picking historic styles.

Why Do Period Dramas Get Footwear Wrong?

Creating a beloved period drama is extremely reliant on getting the small details right in order to ensure that the audience buys into the story and the liberties that a story in a historical setting will almost invariably have to take.

However, there are a few ways in which the wrong types of shoes can slip through the net, which are typically the result of a production, editing or directing oversight.

Editing Or Direction Errors

A particularly egregious error was found in the Chinese drama Shang Yang Fu (also known as The Rebel Princess or Monarch Industry), as reported by DramaPanda, when star Zhang Ziyi was very visibly wearing modern sneakers in a scene set at least 2000 years before they were invented.

In this case, the fault was with the editors for not cropping or cutting a section of the screen properly, but most cases of footwear issues are the result of either subtle compromises or oversights.

A Broad Approach To Historical Accuracy

The most common reason why period dramas get footwear wrong is that they overlook certain details in favour of a broader approach to historical accuracy; as long as it looks accurate enough to the casual observer in the particular set, small issues can be forgiven.

This is why you may see, for example, boots with sole patterns, stitching designs or laces that are beautiful but perhaps too modern for the period.

Seeing a Chelsea boot with a Cuban heel before they were popularised by The Beatles in the 1960s would be noticeably unusual, to say the least, and the variant would be practically unheard of before the 1950s.

A variant of this is to use period-appropriate footwear but in inappropriate ways and settings. 

This is most commonly seen with outdoor boots and shoes being worn indoors when many historic settings have separate wardrobes for indoor and outdoor gatherings.

Cost And Production Considerations

The final reason, one that affects footwear more than most, is the compromise between maintaining smaller details, keeping within the production’s budget and ensuring that they can be comfortably worn by the actors.

The issue with Monarch Industry was a compromise to ensure that lead actor Zhang Ziyi could walk comfortably and gracefully, and other shows will feature actors walking in shoes with relatively modern soles and tread patterns in order to prioritise the performance.

Another aspect of this is time and money; historic shoes and materials tend to fall apart over the centuries, and making perfectly accurate replacements would require a lot of time and money that many productions would rather spend in more conspicuous ways.

It is worth getting boots right, however, as they can become as iconic a part of a performance as any other part of the costume.

How Can The Right Boots Reflect Your Personality? 

Costuming is not just about period accuracy but about reflecting a character’s personality. Some choices which may seem like errors or anachronisms are often also storytelling devices.

A notable albeit relatively recent example was in the season four episode of The Crown, “The Balmoral Test”, where Queen Elizabeth’s spare set of boots that Margaret Thatcher wore whilst hunting around Balmoral became a subtle statement of a power struggle.

Another, particularly effective example was the knee-length leather boots worn by Suranne Jones playing diarist Anne Lister in Gentleman Jack.

The show has been praised for its exceptional attention to detail with its costuming, and given that her androgynous appearance was central to both the fictional depiction and real-life Ms Lister, the choice of thick, functional boots, then considered to be distinctly unladylike, is a defining trait that the costuming department took great pains to depict.

The boots can complete an outfit and reveal a person’s true priorities, whether that person is a character in a critically acclaimed TV show or a person focusing on country pursuits.