high button shoe

plural high button shoes

1. historicalAn ankle boot fastened by a row of buttons (in fashion from the late 19th to mid-20th century).

   She protested she could not read for a part which obliged her to appear in no more than a bra, a corset, and high-button shoes.

   1971, Mordecai Richler, St. Urbain’s Horseman, New York: Knopf, Part 4, Chapter 19, p. 429

   1 more example

   A bed slat leaning against the wall, and in one corner a woman’s high button shoe, curled up at the toe and broken over the instep.

   1939, John Steinbeck, chapter 6, in The Grapes of Wrath, New York: Viking, published 1958, page 56