Blogtober | V&A Shoes: Pleasure and Pain exhibition

 When Georgia from Mapped Out told me there was a shoe exhibition on at the V&A museum in London, I was sooo up for it. I love shoes so much, and knew it would be so cool to see lots of different shoes from the ages. There were old shoes, new shoes, disgusting shoes and shoes that I have literally fallen in love with which is always a tricky thing. It's horrible falling in love with a pair of shoes, and realising that you will probably never be able to afford them.

 You pre-book your tickets, and there are new admissions every fifteen minutes. Tickets are only £12 which I didn't think was bad at all. We got there early because we were meeting our friend for lunch, but it was still really busy. If you are going to go, I might suggest going when people generally eat their lunch because you will miss the queues going round. It was quite a small exhibition too so there were queues in front of every part which was quite frustrating at times.

Unfortunately you couldn't take pictures inside of the exhibition which really was such a shame - I really wanted to showcase it on my blog. BUT, I guess it makes it even better if you do decide to go yourself. I loved the little quotes that were dotted around the exhibition, and there was a lot of information. A recurring theme was obviously that shoes do have the power to change your life - and there was a lot of focus on shoes in fairy tales and things like that.

"Shoes help us to achieve our dreams"

 We saw some absolutely incredible shoes downstairs - from Cinderella's glass slipper and Marilyn Monroe's shoes to shoes that were literally a toe post on a metal platform, and the tiniest shoes ever that were worn by the women in China who bound their feet. Some of the shoes were absolutely stunning, I fell in love with a fair few pairs. However, there were some pretty disgusting shoes too, and some that looked SO uncomfortable (a couple you had to balance on your toes, and some women had to be supported by their maids!). I loved the fact that they included some really old shoes too - it was an exhibition of shoes through the ages!

Another really cool part of the exhibition was the upstairs. They had people's personal collections of shoes which I loved - it was such a great idea. I was only disappointed that I hadn't been asked! I have shoes everywhere!! It was a really personal touch and I liked that they included this part in the exhibition too. 

The Pleasure and Pain exhibition was fantastic, and I'm so pleased we went - thank you for suggesting it Georgia! I can't recommend it enough. It is also perfectly situated in the fashion area of the museum so we were able to mooch around there too and thankfully we could get some pictures of what they offered there.

Have you been to the V&A Shoe exhibition? Do you love shoes?