Shoe Bottles

Two shoe-shaped bottles from Ideal Industrial Limited: the “Sports Shoe Shape Glass Bottle With Cork (SHB001)” and the “Glass Bottle in Female Shoe Shape (ISB018).”

These two bottles remind me of Glenn O’Brien’s observations about men dressing too casually on dates with dressed-up women. (See: How to be a Man.)  Most shoe-shaped bottles are either men’s sneakers or women’s high heel shoes. What sort of products would come in figural bottles like these?

High-heel shoe-shaped bottles have sometimes been used to contain liqueurs and perfumes and liquid soap might give us cause to look at “women’s pumps” from a whole new angle...

Marks and Spencer used the exact same ISB018 “female shoe shaped” bottle for their 2008 chocolate dairy milk liqueur, below.  Although, in their case, they used a stopper rather than a twist off cap and there’s the added hangtag and ribbon. (via: Cool Buzz)

I was thinking that liquid shoe polish would be a good product to package in a shoe-shaped bottle. For some reason, most vintage, shoe-shaped bottles contained ink, although I did find one shoe-shaped bottle that supposedly contained shoe polish. (the “Rockingham” bottle shown below)

 

(For more about shoe-shaped glass bottles see: Collectors Weekly.)

Above left: the vintage “Rockingham” shoe polish bottle (via: LiveAuctioneers); middle: an Anna Dello Russo shoe-shaped purfume bottle (via: PoisePolish); on right: a shoe bottle hookah via: SuperPiece (see also: Coke Bottle Water Pipe)

As for the sneaker-shaped bottle, Avon seems to be the only company that got into those in big way. Not surprising, since graceless, figural bottles seem to be their specialty.

(Avon sneaker-shaped bottles, after the fold...)

(I was sorry not to find a single photo of one of these Avon sneaker bottles with the cap removed.)

Also: a TV commerical for the Anna Dello Russo shoe-shaped purfume:

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Comments

[Daniel]

The little collection in the black-and-white photo is charming.