Winklepicker

Winklepickers or winkle pickers are a style of shoe or boot worn from the 1950s onward by male and female British rock and roll fans. The feature which gives both the boot and shoe their name is the very sharp and quite long pointed toe, reminiscent of medieval footwear and approximately the same as the long pointed toes on some women's high fashion shoes and boots in the late 2000s. The pointed toe was called the winkle picker toe because in England periwinkle snails or winkles are or were a popular seaside snack, which is eaten using a pin or other pointed object to carefully extract the soft parts out of the coiled shell, hence the phrase: "to winkle something out", and from that, winklepickers as a humorous name for shoes with a very pointed tip.