Lace me up Ciocie

Lace me up in all the colours. I love this, no not because I want to dress up like a hanging salami or a stuffed Floretine chicken breast though I am sure I will eat that for dinner tonight. It's because I'm a nerd, yeah fashion history is alright with me.  If you follow my Instagram (ThisWogLife) you will see a few examples of Abruzzese traditional dress and their pleasant peasant shoes. Yes I come from a string of mountainesque goat herders and farmers and the smartest thing my parents and grandparents ever did was to leave. They left behind the very quaint and disturbingly beautiful lands of Abruzzo with it's rich history of battle, struggle, depression and not to mention their 'ciocie' or as my cousins call them 'pixie shoes'. Oh yeah I remember dressing up in them and though you can't see I do believe I was wearing them.

My point - These shoes are just a modern interpretation of 'christmas past' though I wouldn't plough in them but I'd surely pose in them and look good while doing it.  Let's look at the facts, a ciocie is a poor man's shoe, a workers shoe. It's to cover the feet from soil and hardship. So who are we fooling? Is this just a way of saying that we aren't really as rich as we would like to be? Or are we yearning to throw off the shackles of easy living? The feet are bare under the lacing, there is nothing to hide.

The photo found - I look as impressed as a toilet seat waiting for a fat lady.

I'm the smallest out of the costumed litter, my ma is in the white pants. The others were all part of the Abruzzese Australian Community. B'oh?

The famous Ciocie