Clear heels and avant-garde design are not typically associated with 1950s fashion. We envision petticoats under dresses, basic leather heels with a gleaming polish, and flawlessly coiffed hair. However, there were some unique designs emerging from fashion forward thinkers, and we’ll see a couple of them today in shoe form.

The film below from British Pathé shows shoe designers at work crafting some of the most trendy shoes we’ve seen. From the ornamentation to the heel form and size, these designers were responsible for designing these styles from beginning to end.

This footage from 1957 features some startlingly futuristic designs, like glass wedges with a scene within and sleek leather high heeled mules. These two styles would not appear in the closets of ordinary women until the 1970s and 1990s, respectively. View the colorful outfits in the newsreel film below.