Орта ғасырдағы польшалық ұзын мұңдық аяқ киімдері

Shoe with long pointed toe from Poland, popular in 15th century Europe
the footwear

Poulaines, also known by other names, were a style of unisex footwear with extremely long toes that were fashionable in Europe at various times in the Middle Ages. The poulaine proper was a shoe or boot of soft material whose elongated toe (also known as a poulaine or pike) frequently required filling to maintain its shape. The chief vogue for poulaines spread across Europe from medieval Poland in the mid 14th century and spread across Europe, reaching upper class England with the 1382 marriage of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia and remaining popular through most of the 15th century. Sturdier forms were used as overshoes and the sabatons of the era's armor were often done in poulaine style. Poulaines were periodically condemned by Christian writers of the time as demonic or vain. Kings of the era variously taxed them as luxuries, restricted their use to the nobility, or outright banned them. After becoming more common as women's footwear and expanding to awkward lengths, poulaines fell from fashion in the 1480s and were seldom revived, although they are considered an influence on some later trends such as the 1950s British winklepicker boots.

The usual English name poulaine (/p//u/'/l//eɪ//n/) is a borrowing and clipping of earlier Middle French soulers a la poulaine ("shoes in the Polish fashion") from the style's supposed origin in medieval Poland. They have also been known as pikes from the common weapon of the era; as piked, peaked, or copped shoes; and krakows from the former Polish capital; crakow, and liripipe can also be used particularly for the elongated toe itself, causing some writers to mistakenly restrict the usage of poulaine to only the toe and to insist on crakow as the name of the footwear itself. Despite appearing in a 2014 Vogue article, although this was not generally applied to the shoe itself.

Shoes with pointed, curled, and/or elongated toes are documented in the archeological record back to at least 3000BC and have passed in and out of fashion over time. In classical antiquity, the Etruscan calceus repandus ("turned calceus") was worn by both genders before becoming particularly associated under the Romans with Juno Sospita and related goddesses. In Byzantine fashion, priestly vestments included gilt slippers ending in forward point from at least the 5th century. Pointed toed shoes first became a major trend in Western fashion with the late 11th century pigache. They were ridiculed by poets and historians and censured by the clergy, who compared them to scorpion's tails and ram's horns and repeatedly connected them to effeminacy and homosexuality while simultaneously condemning how most courtiers adopted the fashion to "seek the favors of women with every kind of lewdness". As a returning papal legate, the former professor Robert de Courson banned other faculty of the University of Paris from wearing them in August 1215. The same year, the Fourth Lateran Council also banned embroidered and pointed toe shoes for clergy. Guibert of Nogent blamed the origin of the pigache on footwear exported from Islamic Cordoba, After its initial excesses reaching about beyond the foot It spread from the Polish court of Casimir the Great to France and thence to Burgundy, Germany, England, and Scotland. The arrivalor resumptionof this fashion in England is traditionally associated with the marriage of [[Richard II of England and Anne of Bohemia, daughter of the emperor [[Emperor Charles IV in 1382. In his entry for the year 1394, the Evesham monk who wrote the History of the Life and Reign of Richard II claimed that "with this Queen there came from Bohemia into England those accursed vices, namely shoes with a long beakthe English cracows or pikestaking up in length so that it is necessary to tie them to the shin with silver chains before they can be used to walk forward". The morality play Castle of Perseverance includes the footwear in the "advice" that Humanum Genus ("Mankind") gets from Superbia ("Pride"): "Look that thou blow mickle boasts with long crakows on thy shoes". In 1463, [[Edward IV of England passed a sumptuary law that "no knight under the state of a lord, esquire, gentleman, nor other person shall use nor wear after the feast of Saint Peter any shoes or boots having pikes passing the length of two inches" (5 cm). In 1465, they were banned in England altogether, so that all cordwainers and cobblers within the City of London and environs were prohibited from making shoes with pikes more than 2 inches long. By the 1480s, poulaines had generally fallen from fashion in favor of the wide duckbill shoes supposedly popularized by CharlesVIII of France owing to his own six toed foot. However, given that John Stow was writing over 100 years after the shoes fell out of fashion, and the lack of rigorous historical research in the writings of the time, he cannot be considered a reliable source. His record of Act 4 of Edward IV is exaggerated—the actual act does mention restrictions in length, but not monetary penalties, parliament or clergy:
cquote | Nulle persone Cordewaner ou Cobeler face ascuns soler galoges ou husend oveqe ascun pike ou poleine qe passera la longuer ou mesure de deux poutz.

Sabatons were the protective footwear used with medieval European armor. During the period that poulaines were in fashion, the sabatons sometimes became similarly awkwardly long or pointed and interfered with soldiers' ability to walk or run. At the 1386 Battle of Sempach, it became necessary for the knights of Leopold III, Duke of Austria, to quickly dismount and fight on foot. Because they had not prepared for this, many were obliged to cut off the tips of their sabatons on the field to continue. Swiss chroniclers report a huge pile of these shoetips were found in a heap after the battle and this was illustrated in the account of the battle in the 1513 Luzerner Schilling. A surviving pair of sabatons belonging to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, have extremely long ends for use on horseback but these are detachable if fighting on foot became necessary. The catches can be seen over the area of the big toe.