Between 1955 and 1957, Warhol was the sole illustrator for shoe manufacturer I. Miller and made new drawings of shoes each week for ads in the New York Times. À la recherche du shoe perdu celebrates the central role shoes played in his early career and imagination. The title is a riff on Marcel Proust's famous novel A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time, or Remembrance of Things Past).
Before Warhol discovered screen printing, he reproduced his illustrations as lithographs. The black line lithographs were then hand-coloured by Warhol giving the prints a unique appeal.
“A la recheche du shoe perdu” was is first art series that Warhol created in 1955.