Winklepicker

Winklepickers, or winkle pickers, are a style of shoe or boot worn from the 1950s onward by male and female British rock and roll fans. The feature that gives both the boot and shoe their name is the very sharp and long pointed toe, reminiscent of medieval footwear and approximately the same as the long pointed toes on some women's high-fashion shoes and boots in the late 2000s.

The extremely pointed toe was called the winkle picker because in England periwinkle snails, or winkles, are a popular seaside snack which is eaten using a pin or other pointed object to extract the soft parts out of the coiled shell carefully, hence the phrase: "to winkle something out", and based on that, winklepickers became a humorous name for shoes with a very pointed tip. Other countries had other humorous names, e.g. in Norway and Sweden they were called myggjagere/myggjagare, literally "Mosquito Chasers". They are still popular in the raggare and rockabilly subcultures. In some parts of the U.S. they are called "roach stompers."

Winklepicker shoes, inspired by the Poulaines worn by the medieval French nobility, were a conspicuous contrast to the brothel creepers worn by Teddy Boys. The male shoes were lace-up Oxford style with a low heel and an exaggerated pointed toe. A Chelsea Boot style (elastic-sided with a two-inch, and later as much as two-and-one-half-inch, Cuban heel) was notably worn by the Beatles but although it had a pointed toe, was not considered to be a winklepicker. Winklepicker shoes from Stan's of Battersea were also worn by the Teddy Girls as well as being a fleeting fashion for young women generally.

In the early 1960s, the winklepicker toe was popular with modernists, the forerunners of the mods. In the early 1960s, the point was effectively chopped off (they hung on for longer than that in the UK) and gave rise to the "chisel toe" on the footwear of both genders. However, winklepickers with traditional sharp-point styles made a comeback of sorts in the late 1970s and early 1980s (either as previously unworn old-stock, second-hand originals, or contemporary-production attempted copies) and worn by several subculture groups including mods, rockabillies, punks, rock'n'roll revivalists, and in the goth scene, where they are known as "pikes".

...
Wikipedia