By a great storyteller, historian and walker, the micro-story of an object, taken as a revelator of times, destinies and cultures, mixing history of techniques, political history and cultural history. We will meet soldiers and peasants, hikers, artists, comic troopers, politicians and ... shoes! As a long-distance walker, Antoine de Baecque offers, with the talent of a narrator and the sense of historical inquiry that one knows him, to look into an object that is a priori derisory: the shoes, these solid shoes originally designed for the army. This word that everyone thinks he knows, to the point that, like the "trash", he largely escaped the designer of the mid-nineteenth century, entrepreneur Alexis Godillot, has become a common word. It remains singularly polysemic. Its circulation and its multiple meanings open, over a century and a half, to the study of environments, contexts, uses, discourses, extremely diverse and revealing. Several technical, aesthetic, political and cultural traditions intersect and fight each other. The godillot thus crystallizes representations as diverse as controversial and stimulating. This micro-story of an object is a revelatory of times, destinies, cultures, and allows to expose a form of politicization that makes the godillot a little known symbol of French political sensitivity. We will meet soldiers and peasants, hikers, artists, comic troopers, politicians and ... shoes!