Hello! I have these vintage Bally pumps and hope someone can help me figure out approximate date, size, materials, or point me to resources for finding info. Cut looks 1930s/40s to me? Brown leather appears to be crocodile (has dots). Real? Inner toe box is lined in a tan canvas/twill seen in one photo. They have leather soles, 3.5" heel, probably non-original heel tips. Inner sole has gold printed Made In Switzerland Bally Paris New York label. Hard to see on inner heel is printed "7507 OSMAN". Along the inner side wall are hand written numbers in white but I don't know if those are common to Bally shoes, if there's a code they correspond to re: dates/size and if there are resources for decoding? Any opinions or info appreciated!
Gorgeous shoes! At first glance I'm thinking late 40s or early 50s, but can you please post a photo showing the shoes or just one shoe fully from the side - maybe lay one on it's side and take a photo from directly above. I'd like to see the heel shape properly.
Thanks for looking! I'm an awful photographer but here's the view you wanted. Do you know if there is any reference source for Bally labels in different years?
Karin is bang on c. 1948 - 1954. If they were earlier the heels would be a bit straighter and the throat probably but a little higher and the toe a bit more rounded or blunt. If later the toe would be a bit more almond shaped and the throat cut lower, not straight across. These may have had detachable bows originally, which is why the throat is cut straight across.
Thank you, @Garbo! They are lovely shoes, and I'm glad I saw right re. dating, but like Jonathan explained so well, the heel shape can tell us so much! We do have Bally in our Label Resource, https://vintagefashionguild.org/label-resource/bally-of-switzerland/ - and our Label Resource team would surely be happy to add yours too if you'd like - see also https://forums.vintagefashionguild.org/threads/post-labels-for-the-label-resource-here-2022.76399/. The trouble with Bally is in my view that they had different lines and different logos/scripts going and in use at the same time. Being in Switzerland, I encounter Bally shoes every so often at second hand shops, and I've seen many different versions, and each pair that I had seemed to be different. And even when they started using the newer block script logo and you'd have that on the insole of the shoe, on the leather sole outside they might still have been using the "old" script logo like the one in your shoes. Bally can be really confusing!
