The Chelsea Boot

The Chelsea boot has one of the longest histories of any shoe on this site. It's an ankle boot with elastic panels set into the sides, so it slips on and off without laces or buttons, and its design goes back to the early Victorian era. The name, though, belongs firmly to the 1960s.

The elastic-sided boot dates from the late 1830s - the earliest gussets used covered coiled wire, soon replaced by India-rubber elastic - and it's usually credited to the London bootmaker J. Sparkes Hall, who promoted it to Queen Victoria. It was popular through the Victorian era for both men and women, alongside button boots and laced boots, as a practical everyday and riding boot. It never entirely disappeared, but by the mid-twentieth century it was seen as a fairly plain, practical style.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, it was taken up by the fashionable young crowd around the King's Road in Chelsea, London - artists, photographers, boutique owners, and the Swinging London set - and it became known as the Chelsea boot. It suited the mod look perfectly: sleek, neat, pointed or slightly rounded at the toe, and close to the ankle, so it made slim trousers and short skirts look long and clean. The Beatles made one version world famous. In 1961 John Lennon and Paul McCartney commissioned a Chelsea-style boot with a raised Cuban heel from the London theatrical shoemaker Anello & Davide, and "Beatle boots" became one of the most copied fashions of the decade.

Men wore them with narrow suits and trousers, but women wore them too, with mini skirts, slim trousers, and tights. They sat alongside the white plastic go-go boots as one of the decade's key boots, but with a very different feel: where go-go boots were playful and futuristic, the Chelsea boot was sleek, understated, and a little bit rock and roll. I like the Chelsea boot as a reminder that 1960s fashion wasn't only about the new. Sometimes it was about taking something old and practical and making it look instantly modern in the right setting - and the Chelsea boot has been a wardrobe staple ever since.