[4V50 Gary]

Because TFL is going to teach you how to make your own shoes good enough for a black tie event. Imagine a model strolling down the runway with a pair of these puppies adorning her feet.

SAVANNAH [GA] REPUBLICAN, August 28, 1863, p. 2, c. 2
Squirrel Skin Shoes.—Squirrel skins tacked down to a board, the hair next to the board, with hickory ashes sprinkled over them for a few days, to facilitate the removal of the hair, and then placed in a strong decoction of red oak bark will, at the end of four days, make excellent leather, far stronger and tougher than calf skin. Four skins will make a pair of ladies shoes. We hear that the ladies of some of the interior counties are wearing these shoes, and find them equal in softness and superior in durability to any other. The longer the skins are left in the decoction of bark the better the leather. By this plan anybody may have a tanyard, and make their own leather, as the skins are easily and cheaply procured, and any vessel holding a gallon will serve as a vat. Any one will do well to try it.—Richmond Whig.

If you don't like squirrel shoes, how about traditional cowhide for shoe material?

DAILY CONSTITUTIONALIST [AUGUSTA, GA], April 10, 1862, p. 2, c. 5

From the Southern Federal Union.
Raw Hide Shoes.

A few weeks since I casually heard one of the most intelligent planters of Georgia, and who also plants largely in Texas, giving a description of this article, and believing that the manner of preparing them would be useful to a people who are fighting a powerful enemy without and a worse enemy within our midst, the vile and detestable extortioner, I procured for publication the following statement.
Baldwin.

Raw Hide Texas Shoes.

Capt. Clark Owens, of Texana, Jackson county, Texas, has a company of eighty men, now stationed at Houston, Texas, defending the coast and city of Galveston; many of these gallant soldiers are well shod with the raw hide shoes, which in symmetry and utility are not behind the best shoes used in our Southern Confederacy. The beef hide hide [sic] is placed in water and ashes and remains there until the hair will come off, the hide is then soaked in fresh water and rubbed until the lye is extracted; it is then soaked from 48 to 60 hours in strong salt and water; this prevents the hide from ever becoming hard and horny; it is then dried in the open air, not in the sun, and then beat with a maul or mallet until it becomes pliable as leather; it is then made into shoes as shoemakers make other shoes; upper part and soles are all of this prepared raw hide and made by sewing or pegging on the soles. The shoes are then well greased with oil, hog’s lard or tallow, greased all over the outside, both upper and bottom parts; this renders the shoes water-proof and in every way as valuable as the best leather shoes. These shoes are made with the grain or hair side outside, and in every respect are a cheap and valuable shoe.