Peep-toe boots let them all hang out

You've seen them at the mall, on the red carpet and maybe even in your own closet: booties and boots that hug the foot, are snug against the ankle, maybe encase the leg to the knee or above — but leave the toes peeking out from a small opening, exposed to the elements. What was once a demure peek-a-boo detail on pumps worn by boundary-pushing 1940s pinup girls has evolved into what often looks like the foot and ankle have been mummified, with the toes forgotten.

What gives?

It's partly sex, partly status and partly runway style pushing into the mass market.

Like the bust area, toes are generally seen as an erotic zone (toe cleavage anyone?), and the peep toe on a shoe is like a low-cut blouse that exposes cleavage. "There seems to be a lot of circumstantial evidence that people think of feet as a smaller version of the body," says Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. "The term 'toe cleavage' is related to breasts, and peep toe, as its name indicates, is like a type of peep show — a way of exposing part of yourself."

But the exposed toe had less risque beginnings in modern Western civilization, according to Elizabeth Semmelhack, senior curator of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto. The first time modern European women dared to show their toes was after the French Revolution, when the Neoclassical style influenced women to wear sandals to look like Grecian goddesses, she says.

Open-toe shoes made their way back into style after the Depression with a rise in the influence of beach culture. Sandals evolved into peep-toe evening shoes, a style that stayed strong through the 1940s. They resurfaced in fashion during the 1970s and more recently as tough, Frankenstein-goes-on-holiday, platform booties on the Alexander Wang spring 2009 runway. Since then, the style has been ubiquitous on runways and in shoe aisles alike.

Now it's fall and the footwear sitting in stores should be more suede and shearling than stiletto and open toe. But peep-toe boots still dominate sales floors, and toes will still be out in full force regardless of wind, rain or cooler weather.