Fun, colorful shoes have taken over

Heels covered in rainbows, sandals slapped with zebra print and fuzzy, furry slippers are in style — no matter how old you are.

“The more outrageous, the better,” one graphic designer, Jessica Pridgen, told the Wall Street Journal.

According to the Journal, these wild and wonderful looks have taken over expensive designer shoes and affordable kicks of all shapes and sizes.

Maybe it’s just that adults have finally caught up with kids’ tastes in shoes.

Children’s shoes have been bedazzled with sparkles, equipped with flashing LED lights, and covered in fun patterns and bright colors for decades.

Shoes weren’t always a fashion statement, but a practical need.

People have been wearing shoes for about 50,000 years, according to Britannica, when ancient peoples needed to protect their feet from freezing conditions.

More than 2,200 years ago, mountain dwellers in Iran wore a strip of leather wrapped around the foot and secured with rawhide lacings.

Over time, different kinds of shoes developed different meanings. In Ancient Greece, people often wore simple sandals, and any closed-toe shoe was a luxury. The shoes a Roman wore could tell you their rank and place in society.

By the 15th century, the fashion in England was long, pointed shoes — sometimes measuring 18 inches long or more.

For most of history, shoes were made by hand by cobblers. They also were made to fit either foot — it wasn’t until the 1800s that making different right and left shoes became popular.

The Industrial Revolution brought a way for lots of shoes to be produced quickly and cheaply. Soon, countless designs, colors, materials and patterns were on people’s feet.