J & M Medical Footwear

History of Clogs

Wartime shortage in Europe meant leather was not available for boots and shoes. Instead governments encouraged people to turn to clogs as a practical solution. Although fashion magazines patriotically photographed their top models wearing clogs it failed to attract their readers. By then most people associated clogs with working-class poverty. Government's efforts failed to encourage people to wear clogs during the war. Even when the middle classes were eventually forced to wear clogs it was very much under duress. Black marketeers were reported to wear clogs which had shoe prints going the opposite way. This was thought to cast doubt in the mind of anyone trying to follow them. Their clogs were also reputed to contain secret compartments to hide clandestine information. Clogs did have a surge of fashion interest in the nineteen seventies when the supergroup Abba were popular. Although the group are better known for their platform boots they were also photographed many times wearing wooden clogs. A popular line of fashion clogs followed which had the ABBA logo stamped on the outer side of the soles. Wooden shoes remain popular in Scandinavia and are worn by both men and women. More recently pop celebrity Brain May (formerly of Queen) has been photographed wearing clogs. May seldom wore them on live performances but found his clog extremely comfortable. Another public devotee to clogs is Whoopi Goldberg who has been seen wearing them in several of her movies including Made in America.
Nursing shoes came along with antistatic in mind to protect the user due to explosive gases.

The word clog, as applied to footwear, has these meanings:

A type of shoe or sandal made predominantly out of wood.
A type of heavy boot or shoe with leather sides and uppers and typically thick wooden soles. They may have steel toecaps and/or steel reinforcing inserts in the undersides of the soles.
A special kind of shoe worn while clog-dancing (clogging). They are similar to tap shoes, but the taps are free to click against each other, therefore producing a different sound than tap shoes.
Nowadays, "clogs" also means comfortable slip-on shoes. They are often made out of leather, but some clogs keep the bottom part out of wood. All-rubber clogs are often worn while gardening, because they can be easily hosed off and allowed to air-dry. Some clogs come with heels, and are usually distinguished from mules by their higher vamp. It is commonly accepted that men and women can wear low-heeled or high-heeled clogs.[citation needed]
Clogs (with meaning 1 or 2) were, and in some regions still are, widely worn by workers as protective clothing in factories, mines and farms.

Traditional clogs are made out of many different species of wood (willow, poplar, birch, beech, alder wood). They are associated with the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden (though Swedish clogs do not resemble Dutch clogs) as part of the touristic "Holland"/Sweden image, where they are seen as a form of national dress. Because of this, Dutch people are sometimes called cloggies, that is, clog-wearers. In Dutch, clogs are known as klompen. The traditional, all wooden clogs have been officially labelled as safety shoes, passing European standards for the CE mark with flying colours. Today, Dutch clogs are available in many tourist shops. Wearing clogs is considered to be healthy for the feet. Despite that fact, the Dutch don't use them much anymore for everyday use, but clogs are still used by people working in their gardens, farms, and by planters.

In England slats of wood held in place by thonging or similar were known as "Pattens" and they were usually worn over leather or fabric shoes to raise the wearer's foot above the mud of the unmade road. Poorer people who couldn't afford shoes wore wood directly against the skin, and so the clog was developed, made of part leather and part wood. The English tended to carve Welsh and West Country alder, Scottish birch and Lincolnshire willow. The Welsh used alder, birch & sycamore.<Actinic:Variable Name = '1'/> The wearing of clogs in Britain really took off with the Industrial Revolution, when workers in the mills, mines, iron, steel, and chemical works, workshops and factories needed strong, cheap footwear. The heyday of the clog in Britain was between 1840s and 1920's and, although traditionally associated with Lancashire, they were worn all over the country, not just in the industrial north of England.<Actinic:Variable Name = '2'/> There is a theory that clogging or clog dancing arose in these mills as a result of the mill workers entertaining themselves by syncopating foot taps with the rhythmic sounds made by the loom shuttles. Clog dancing became a widespread pastime during this period in England. During the nineteenth century, competitions were held and there were professional clog dancers who performed in the music halls.

Clog dancing is a continuing tradition in Wales. The difference between Welsh clogging and other step dance traditions is that the performance will not only include complicated stepping, but also 'tricks'. For example, snuffing out a candle flame with the dancer's feet, 'toby stepping' - similar to Cossack dancing — and high leaps into the air. Clog fighting, known in Lancashire as 'purring', was a means of settling disputes. Both the fighting, and the betting among spectators was illegal.

"It is all up and down fighting here. They fought quite naked, excepting their clogs. When one has the other down on the ground he first endeavours to choke him by squeezing his throat, then he kicks him on the head with his clogs. Sometimes they are very severely injured."<Actinic:Variable Name = '3'/>

A Swedish clogThe French name for a wooden shoe or clog is sabot. in the 18th and 19th century clogs became associated with the lower classes. From this period the word sabotage derived from sabot, reportedly describing how disgruntled workers damaged workplace machines in France by tossing their shoes into the mechanisms. However, according to some accounts, sabot-clad workers were simply considered less productive than others who had switched to leather shoes, roughly equating early use of the term sabotage with inefficiency.<Actinic:Variable Name = '4'/>

Clogs are traditional also in Northern Italy and southern Switzerland, where they are often part of the traditional local costumes. In Friul, clogs are called, palotis, galosis or dalminis. They are traditionally made with an upward pointing wooden sole and a leather hood.

In Asturias, Cantabria and Galicia, the self-governing territories in north west Spain, there is a long tradition of clog making and wearing. The Asturian clog is unusual in that it has two 'feet' on the ball of the foot so that with the heel, the whole clog is elevated off the ground by three supporting structures, almost on mini stilts. (see picture of the Cantabrian clog below). This is useful when working outside or in the barn. These clogs are still worn in many rural northern Spanish 'pueblos' today. Traditionally a slipper is worn inside the clog and the clog is kicked off at the door before entering the house.

<Actinic:Variable Name = 'edit'/> Clogs as overshoes
Pattens are an overshoe variant of sandals or clogs meant to protect other footwear by either covering or elevating it above the street. Geta are Japanese wooden shoes worn outside the house, and are also worn in Korea and elsewhere.

<Actinic:Variable Name = 'edit'/> Clogs in 1970s fashion
Swedish clogs became popular in the seventies and eighties for both sexes. They were usually worn without socks and were considered suitable for the avant-garde man.

<Actinic:Variable Name = 'edit'/> Platform Clogs in 1980s and 1990s fashion
Based on the clog model, platform clogs or sandals, often raised as high as 6 or even 8 inches right through between sole and insole, were another fashion of the 1980s and 90s in many western countries for women. This large mid layer was often made of solid cork, although some were merely of flaky plastic with a cork covering. The sole, more often than not, was made of a light sandy-colored rubber. Some of the platforms of these clogs were encompassed about with a stringy laced effect.