There is now a double reason for paying a summer visit to London’s Victoria and Albert Museum where the mind-blowing exhibition devoted to the work of the late Alexander McQueen (on until August 2) has now been joined by a show dealing with footwear which continues into the new year.

Shoes: Pleasure and Pain features more than 250 pairs of historic and contemporary shoes from around the world. Curator Helen Persson has accessed many from the V&A’s own unrivalled collection, which spans the globe and a period of 2,000 years.

Others have been borrowed from collections held elsewhere and from the wardrobes of private individuals. On view are shoes worn by or associated with such high-profile figures as Marilyn Monroe, Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (whose late 1940s peep-toe platforms can be seen in the centre of the photograph above), Lady Gaga, Kylie Minogue and the Hon Daphne Guinness.

The last, of course, was a famous wearer of shoes designed by Alexander McQueen. You may remember pictures of her teetering to his funeral in (or on) a pair of them. These were, I think, the 30cm high Armadillo boots from his Plato’s Atlantic collection of 2010.

Helen Persson, writing in the McQueen show catalogue, notes: “A bulge above the toes enabled the model to lift the boot more easily when walking. Three models from the catwalk line-up nevertheless refused to wear them. They were perhaps right to be cautious for the Armadillo, in typical McQueen fashion, had pushed the boundaries of the traditional shoe shape. No longer shoes in the conventional sense, they had become an organic part of the wearer.”

It will be seen from this that these shoes, and others very like them in the show, illustrate the pain that complements the pleasure in the exhibition title. We are shown, in vivid detail, the agonising aspect of wearing shoes as well as the euphoria and obsession they can inspire.

Persson explains that the importance of shoes extends far beyond the protection and comfort of the wearer’s feet.

“Shoes are one of the most telling aspects of dress. Beautiful, sculptural objects, they are also powerful indications of gender, status, identity, taste and even sexual preference. Our choice of shoes can help project an image of who we want to be.”

The section of the show styled “Seduction” illustrates how shoes represent an expression of sexual empowerment or a passive source of pleasure. High Japanese geta, extreme heels and tight-laced leather boots from the (Victorian) Prince of Wales’s bootmaker are on display, as well as examples of erotic styles from recent mainstream fashion.

Shoes can be objects of fetishism, as feet can of course. Closet Queens, the book I wrote about on this page last week, told of a titled gentlemen whose chief source of sexual pleasure came in the removal of the boots of young men after a day’s hunting.

This led me to ponder that a foot fetishist would find ideal employment for himself – herself too, I suppose – in a shoe shop. I wonder if any of our major high street retailers take steps (sorry!) to eliminate such perverts from their workforce.

On the mezzanine level of the show, we are given a laboratory-style setting for a dissection of the processes involved in designing and creating footwear, telling the story from concept to the final shoes.

Designer sketches, materials, embellishments and shoes lasts can be seen here. The lasts include those created for H & M Rayne for Princess Diana, one of the most famous shoe-wearers of her day.

Not perhaps the most famous, an honour that must surely go to Imelda Marcos, the wife of the deposed president of the Philippines whose vast collection of shoes was revealed at the time of his fall.

She is not forgotten in the show, where there is a case containing a pair of sling backs she wore, dated from 1978-92, which have been lent by the Bata Shoe Museum in Canada.

Imelda is quoted on the case, saying: “I did not have 3,000 pairs of shoes. I had 1,060.”