A child's pair of blue plastic beach sandals, dated 1988, in the collection of Museum Rotterdam; who made them is not recorded. Photo Museum Rotterdam, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Jelly shoes
What it took directly
- documentedLa Sarraizienne, the first plastic sandal took from a stock of surplus PVC left with Jean Dauphant, a cutlery maker in Les Sarraix, Auvergne"Jean Dauphant, a cutlery maker, faced a problem when he found himself with surplus PVC. To save his investment, he ingeniously repurposed the material to craft sandals" Inventa (IP news, co-published with World Intellectual Property Review), citing the Auvergne region's General Inventory of Cultural Heritage
- statedThe first plastic beach sandal took from the search for an alternative to leather just after the war"Born in 1946, just after the war, to find a serious alternative to leather, Méduse invented the first plastic sandal." Méduse, the brand that now makes the sandal, on its own history page
- documentedMéduse's Sun sandal took from La Sarraizienne's original moulds, bought by Anne-Céline Humeau of Humeau-Beaupréau"On the sole of the sandals is written "La Sarraizienne", the name of the original Auvergne brand, from which Anne-Céline Humeau -- the CEO of the Humeau-Beaupréau company bought the moulds in the early 2000s." Africanews (2021), reporting from the Humeau-Beaupréau works in Beaupréau-en-Mauges
- documentedAmerican jellies of the 1980s took from Grendene of Brazil, which says it brought them to the US at the 1982 World's Fair in Knoxville"Brazil-based Grendene Shoes claims to have introduced jelly shoes to the U.S. market during the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tenn." Booth Moore, Los Angeles Times (2003), reporting Grendene's own claim
What it learned to do
- statedThe jelly sandal learned from injection moulding: a whole shoe shot from one block of PVC"a spiked sole, rounded toe, and braided straps. All on a body entirely made of injection-molded PVC and manufactured from a single block!" Méduse, on its own history page
- statedThe designer jellies of the late 2000s learned from Melissa, Grendene's design label, by its own account"It’s so interesting for us to see how the fashion world is now catching up with something we have been doing for 30 years." Eduardo Jordão de Magalhães, Melissa's head of international marketing communications, to Jessica Michault, The New York Times / IHT (2009) — the company speaking for itself
The tradition it sits in
- inferredThe 1980s fisherman jelly comes from the French plastic beach sandal's round toe and woven straps"the fisherman shape (with a round toe and T-strap that buckles on the side)" inferred — the LA Times describes the jelly's best-known shape and Méduse describes its 1946 sandal in near-identical terms (rounded toe, braided straps); no source here traces one to the other
- documentedThe jelly shoe comes from plastic becoming an everyday material in the late 1950s and early 1960s, by a shoe historian's account"puts the shoes’ origins in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when plastic became a commonplace material and fashion designers began experimenting with it too." Elizabeth Semmelhack, curator of the Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, as reported by Booth Moore, Los Angeles Times (2003); she doubts the wartime-shortage story
Where the whole form comes from
- documentedThe jelly shoe comes from the man-made "miracle" materials of the 1940s that replaced leather and cotton"Man-made materials invented in the 1940s created a new chapter in fashion history by replacing natural textiles, such as leather and cotton, in many fashionable garments." Fashion, Costume, and Culture (reference work), via Encyclopedia.com
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