The present lot is from Warhol's Diamond Dust Shoe series, highlighting an important motif in Warhol’s early career. As a commercial illustrator for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, illustrating shoes propelled Warhol towards his first critical success. In the 1980s, Warhol revisited this motif by producing multi-coloured combinations of women’s shoes that floated across a flat black background. The composition for this series was inspired by an occasion during an advertisement campaign for Garolini, when shoes tipped from a box were strewn across the floor in a haphazard manner. Polaroid shots were taken as visual basis and Warhol later recreated this spontaneous arrangement using shoes from his own collection. The "diamond dust" that sparkles across the surface of Shoes is in fact pulverised glass, as diamond dust did not produce the same shimmering texture Warhol desired and proved to be too chalky. Shoes combines art, fashion, glitz and glamour in Warhol’s quintessential style.