For generations they have signified femininity and
glamour - but a pair of high heels was once an essential
accessory for men.
Beautiful, provocative, sexy - high heels may be all these
things and more, but even their most ardent fans
wouldn't claim they were practical.
They're no good for hiking or driving. They get stuck in
things. Women in heels are advised to stay off the grass
- and also ice, cobbled streets and posh floors.
And high heels don't tend to be very comfortable. It is
almost as though they just weren't designed for walking
in.
Originally, they weren't.
"The high heel was worn for centuries throughout the
near east as a form of riding footwear," says Elizabeth
Semmelhack of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto.
Good horsemanship was essential to the fighting styles of
Persia - the historical name for modern-day Iran.
"When the soldier stood up in his stirrups, the heel
helped him to secure his stance so that he could shoot
his bow and arrow more effectively," says Semmelhack.
At the end of the 16th Century, Persia's Shah Abbas I had
the largest cavalry in the world. He was keen to forge
links with rulers in Western Europe to help him defeat his
great enemy, the Ottoman Empire.
A men's 17th Century Persian shoe, covered in
shagreen - horse-hide with pressed mustard seeds
So in 1599, Abbas sent the first Persian diplomatic
mission to Europe - it called on the courts of Russia,
Germany and Spain.
A wave of interest in all things Persian passed through
Western Europe. Persian style shoes were enthusiastically
adopted by aristocrats, who sought to give their
appearance a virile, masculine edge that, it suddenly
seemed, only heeled shoes could supply.
Louis XIV wearing his trademark heels in a 1701
portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud
As the wearing of heels filtered into the lower ranks of
society, the aristocracy responded by dramatically
increasing the height of their shoes - and the high heel
was born.
In the muddy, rutted streets of 17th Century Europe, these
new shoes had no utility value whatsoever - but that was
the point.
"One of the best ways that status can be conveyed is
through impracticality," says Semmelhack, adding that
the upper classes have always used impractical,
uncomfortable and luxurious clothing to announce their
privileged status.
"They aren't in the fields working and they don't have to
walk far."
When it comes to history's most notable shoe collectors,
the Imelda Marcos of his day was arguably Louis XIV of
France. For a great king, he was rather diminutively
proportioned at only 5ft 4in (1.63m).
He supplemented his stature by a further 4in (10cm) with
heels, often elaborately decorated with depictions of battle
scenes.
The heels and soles were always red - the dye was
expensive and carried a martial overtone. The fashion
soon spread overseas - Charles II of England's
coronation portrait of 1661 features him wearing a pair of
enormous red, French style heels - although he was over
6ft (1.85m) to begin with.
In the 1670s, Louis XIV issued an edict that only
members of his court were allowed to wear red heels. In
theory, all anyone in French society had to do to check
whether someone was in favour with the king was to
glance downwards. In practice, unauthorised, imitation
heels were available.
Although Europeans were first attracted to heels because
the Persian connection gave them a macho air, a craze in
women's fashion for adopting elements of men's dress
meant their use soon spread to women and children.
"In the 1630s you had women cutting their hair, adding
epaulettes to their outfits," says Semmelhack.
"They would smoke pipes, they would wear hats that
were very masculine. And this is why women adopted the
heel - it was in an effort to masculinise their outfits."
From that time, Europe's upper classes followed a unisex
shoe fashion until the end of the 17th Century, when
things began to change again.
"You start seeing a change in the heel at this point," says
Helen Persson, a curator at the Victoria and Albert
Museum in London. "Men started to have a squarer,
more robust, lower, stacky heel, while women's heels
became more slender, more curvaceous."
The toes of women's shoes were often tapered so that
when the tips appeared from her skirts, the wearer's feet
appeared to be small and dainty.
Fast forward a few more years and the intellectual
movement that came to be known as the Enlightenment
brought with it a new respect for the rational and useful
and an emphasis on education rather than privilege.
Men's fashion shifted towards more practical clothing. In
England, aristocrats began to wear simplified clothes that
were linked to their work managing country estates.
It was the beginning of what has been called the Great
Male Renunciation, which would see men abandon the
wearing of jewellery, bright colours and ostentatious
fabrics in favour of a dark, more sober, and
homogeneous look. Men's clothing no longer operated
so clearly as a signifier of social class, but while these
boundaries were being blurred, the differences between
the sexes became more pronounced.
"There begins a discussion about how men, regardless of
station, of birth, if educated could become citizens," says
Semmelhack.
"Women, in contrast, were seen as emotional, sentimental
and uneducatable. Female desirability begins to be
constructed in terms of irrational fashion and the high
heel - once separated from its original function of
horseback riding - becomes a primary example of
impractical dress."
High heels were seen as foolish and effeminate. By 1740
men had stopped wearing them altogether.
But it was only 50 years before they disappeared from
women's feet too, falling out of favour after the French
Revolution.
By the time the heel came back into fashion, in the
mid-19th Century, photography was transforming the way
that fashions - and the female self-image - were
constructed.
Pornographers were amongst the first to embrace the
new technology, taking pictures of naked women for dirty
postcards, positioning models in poses that resembled
classical nudes, but wearing modern-day high heels.
Semmelhack, author of Heights of Fashion: A History of
the Elevated Shoe, believes that this association with
pornography led to high heels being seen as an erotic
adornment for women.
A rare sight - men in high heels at a gay pride party in
Spain in 2005
The 1960s saw a return of low heeled cowboy boots for
men and some dandies strutted their stuff in platform
shoes in the 1970s.
But the era of men walking around on their toes seems
to be behind us. Could we ever return to an era of guys
squeezing their big hairy feet into four-inch, shiny,
brightly coloured high heels?
"Absolutely," says Semmelhack. There is no reason, she
believes, why the high heel cannot continue to be
ascribed new meanings - although we may have to wait
for true gender equality first.
"If it becomes a signifier of actual power, then men will
be as willing to wear it as women."
