Cuba Material collection · Colección Cuba Material
Powered by CatalogIt · Gestionada con CatalogIt
Catalog
Candie's tan leather high-heeled slide sandals (mules)
Clothing/Dress/Costume
Pair of women's open-toe, backless high-heeled slide sandals (mule type). Uppers are caramel/tan leather built as a fanned, huarache-style vamp of numerous narrow leather strips banded across the instep and gathered through a knotted central element toward the toe. Footbeds are leather, with a gold-foil maker's logo and size at the heel area. Heels are tall sculpted wooden wedges with a concave instep profile, the upper portion wrapped in matching tan leather over exposed darker wood, set on a leather sole. The signature Candie's "slide" silhouette — a minimal leather strap upper over a wooden high heel.
2025.1.341
Belonged to María A. Arús Caraballo. She got them from her mother, who received them as a gift from a relative, who bought them in the USA (or Spain) in the 1980s.
An imported American fashion shoe of the disco-to-early-1980s era. Charles Cole registered the Candie's brand in 1978 under El Greco, Inc., and the wooden-bottomed high-heeled slide became a mass phenomenon, helped by Olivia Newton-John's footwear in the final scene of Grease (1978). From 1978 to 1981 El Greco sold roughly 14 million pairs of the slides to women aged 14 to 30. Western consumer goods of the period typically reached Cuban households through travel, gifts from relatives abroad, or the parallel market.
The Cabrera Arús family collection
María A. Arús Caraballo collection
2025.1
Sandals
Female
7
Leather
Brown
El Greco, Inc.
Brazil
South America
Candie's
Date: circa 1978–early 1980s — consistent with the Candie's script logo and the El Greco production era (the brand passed to Pentland Group in 1986); not narrowable from a date mark on the object.
Inscription
insole
Candie's 109
English
Insole (each shoe), gold-foil cursive logo: "Candie's." Confirmed. Above the logo, impressed/foil size: "7M" (US women's size 7, medium width). Beneath the script logo, a small rectangular foil emblem ("109"). Enhanced but not fully legible; read as the maker's logo box, contents unconfirmed. Sole: "Made in Brazil"
Size 7 (US Women's shoe size)
Two shoes (left, right)
Fair
María A. Arús Caraballo
owner
Havana
Cuba
Caribbean
Central America
use