High-heeled shoes, also known as high heels (colloquially shortened to heels), are a type of shoe with an upward-angled sole. The heel in such shoes is raised above the ball of the foot. High heels cause the legs to appear longer, make the wearer appear taller, and accentuate the calf muscle.
There are many types of high heels in varying styles, heights, and materials. High heels have been used in various ways to convey nationality, professional affiliation, gender, and social status. High heels have been an important statement piece of fashion for centuries in the West.
High heels spread from equestrian origins with the 10th century Persian galesh to wider fashion use. In early 17th-century Europe, high heels were a sign of masculinity and high social status. Towards the end of the century, the trend began to spread to women's fashion. By the 18th century, high-heeled shoes had split along gender lines. By this time, heels for men were chunky squares attached to riding boots or tall formal dress boots, while women's high heels were narrow, pointy, and often attached to slipper-like dress shoes (similar to modern heels). By the 20th century, high heels with a slim profile represented femininity; however, a thick high heel on a boot or clog was still socially acceptable for men. Until the 1950s, shoe heels were typically made of wood, but in recent years they have been made of a variety of materials including leather, suede, and plastic.
Wearing high heels is associated with greater risk of falls, musculoskeletal pain, development of foot deformities, and varicose veins.
History
Pre-18th century
Starting in the 10th century, the Persian cavalry wore galesh, a kind of boot with heels, to ensure their feet stayed in the stirrups. Heeled shoes also ensured the safety of Persian arrow-shooting riders, while standing up on galloping horses. This utility of the heel for horseback riders has been preserved in the Western cowboy boot. Wearing heels became associated with wealth because of its traditional connection with horseback riding, which was expensive and time-consuming.Trufelman, Avery. "Feet of Engineering". 99% Invisible. June 2014. This practical use of the heel set the standard for most horseback riding shoes throughout history and into the present day.
After the Great Schism in the 11th century, the Pope notably began wearing red heeled shoes.Paduka is a high-heeled wooden footwear worn in South Asia and Southeast Asia since the ancient period. During the Medieval period in Europe, both men and women wore wooden pattens under or around their shoes to raise themselves out of the dirty and excrement-filled streets. The chopine combined this with the shoe, reaching heights up to by 1430. Venetian law later limited the height to three inches—but this regulation was widely ignored. At the end of the Elizabethan era, cavalier boots were introduced for riding. These originally had relatively low heels, but by the time of the English Civil War stacked heels for men of up to two inches were common. A 17th-century law in Massachusetts announced that women would be subjected to the same treatment as witches if they lured men into marriage via the use of high-heeled shoes.
Under the Manchu Qing dynasty, most wealthy Han women had bound feet with lotus shoes but some women wore platform shoes elevatedlike many chopineat the center of the sole rather than at the heels.
18th century
Modern high heels were brought to Europe by Persian emissaries of Abbas the Great in the early 17th century. Men wore them to imply their upper-class status; only someone who did not have to work could afford, both financially and practically, to wear such extravagant shoes. Royalty such as King Louis XIV wore heels, and his predecessor King Louis XIII introduced the red heel to the court of French nobility. As the shoes became a fashion trend, other members of society began donning high heels, and some elite members ordered their heels to be made even higher to distinguish themselves from the lower classes.Wade, Lisa. "From Manly to Sexy: The History of the High Heel" The Society Pages. 5 February 2013. As women began to wear heeled shoes in the mid-to-late 17th century, societal trends moved to distinguish men's heels from women's heels. By the 18th century, men wore thick heels, while women wore thin ones. Over the course of the Enlightenment, men's heels began to concentrate on either practical riding boots or tall leather boots worn for status. In the late 1780s, the societal implications of wearing high and thin heels became fixed: high, thin heels represented femininity and the supposed superficiality and extravagance of women.
The design of the high French heels from the late 1600s to around the 1720s placed the wearer's body weight on the ball of the foot and was decorated with lace or braided fabric. From the 1730s to the 1740s, wide heels with an upturned toe and a buckle fastening became popular. The 1750s and 1760s introduced a skinnier, higher heel. The 1790s continued this trend but saw more experimentation with color. Additionally, during this period, there was no difference between the right and left shoes.Blanco F José, et al., editors. Clothing and Fashion: American Fashion from Head to Toe. Santa Barbara, California, ABC-CLIO, an Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2016. Print.
In Britain in 1770, an act was introduced into parliament that would have applied the same penalties to the use of high heels and other cosmetic devices as would have been applied in the case of witchcraft.
During the Regency era Hessian boots similar in appearance to modern cowboy boots were popular among dandies. After the Battle of Waterloo, high-heeled boots declined in popularity and were replaced with the lower-heeled Wellington Boots popularized by the famous British general.
19th century
Heels went out of fashion starting around 1810, and then in 1860, they surged in popularity, with an average height of about two and a half inches. The Pinetto heel and the Cromwell heel were both introduced during this time.Shawcross, Rebecca. "High Heels." The Berg Companion to Fashion. Ed. Valarie Steele. Oxford: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010. Web. Their production was also increased with the invention and eventual mass production of the sewing machine around the 1850s. With sewing machines, yields increased as machines could quickly and cheaply "position the heel, stitch the upper, and attach the upper to the sole."
20th century During the 20th century, World War I and World War II led many countries to ration materials that were previously used to make shoes. Materials such as silk, rubber, and leather were prioritized for military use. Heels began to be replaced with cork and wooden-soled shoes.Stabb, Jo Ann. "The Early 20th Century Through World War II" Clothing and Fashion: American Fashion from Head to Toe, edited by Jose Blanco, vol. 3 ABC-CLIO, pp. 330–332. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Due to the post-war increase in international communication, especially through photography and films, the Western fashion of women's high heels began to spread globally. In the early post-war period, brown and white pumps with cutouts or ankle straps combined with an open toe were some of the most fashionable women's heels. For many women in the West, high-heeled shoes began to symbolize professionalism, whereas leather and rubber thick-heeled boots for men came to be associated with militarism and masculinity.
The era surrounding World War II saw the popularization of pin-up girl posters, the women in which were almost always pictured wearing high heels. In the minds of many men at war, and later, in American society at large, this led to an increase in the strength of the relationship between high heels and female sexuality. The tall, skinny stiletto heel was invented in 1950, and quickly became an emblem of female sexuality. There was a weakening of the stiletto style during the late 1960s, early 1970s, and 1990s when block heels were more prominent, followed by a revival in the 2000s.
For men, high heeled boots made a comeback in the 1950 as the cowboy boot, associated with Western movies. During the 1960 and 1970, Beatle boots, Chelsea boots and Winkle-pickers with Cuban heels became popular among Teddy boys, the mod subculture and the early garage punk scene.
21st century
In the Western world, high-heeled shoes exist in two highly gendered and parallel tracks: highly fashionable and variable women's shoes with thin long heels, and practical, relatively uniform men's shoes in a riding boot style, with thick, relatively short heels. Heels are often described as a sex symbol for women, and magazines like Playboy, as well as other media sources that primarily portray women in a sexual way often do so using high heels. Despite the sexual connotations, heels are considered both fashionable and professional dress for women in most cases, the latter especially if accompanied by a pants suit. Some researchers argue that high heels have become part of the female workplace uniform and operate in a much larger and complex set of display rules.
Visual effects on posture and appearance High-heeled footwear alter posture and gait in ways that produce a range of visual effects associated with perceived attractiveness. By placing the foot in a plantarflexed position, heels tilt the pelvis forward and increase lumbar curvature, shifting the wearer's centre of mass and modifying overall stance and movement. This biomechanical adjustment has been associated with a more pronounced arch of the lower back, which research suggests may influence perceptions of attractiveness, as well as a more upright posture and stylised gait.Morris, P. H.; White, J.; Morrison, E. R.; Fisher, K. (2013). "High heels as supernormal stimuli: How wearing high heels affects judgments of female attractiveness". Evolution and Human Behavior. In addition, heels visually elongate the legs and accentuate calf muscles by altering muscle tension and leg extension.Steele, V. (1999). Shoes: A Lexicon of Style. Rizzoli. Paul Morris, a psychology researcher at the University of Portsmouth, argues that high heels accentuate "sex-specific aspects of female gait," artificially increasing a woman's femininity. Likewise, many see the arching of a woman's back facilitated by wearing high heels as an imitation of a signal of a woman's willingness to be courted by a man. These combined effects can also increase the apparent prominence of the buttocks and chest due to changes in spinal alignment and hip angle, contributing to an overall silhouette that has been culturally associated with femininity and sexual dimorphism.Wade, L.; Tavris, C. (2015). Psychology. Pearson. Such effects are widely discussed in both academic and cultural analyses of fashion, though they reflect perceptual and socially mediated responses rather than inherent changes to the body itself.High-heeled shoe
Types Angle – "the surface of the base of the heel is straight until reaching the waistline, and it looks like the shape of the Korean letter ¬" Annabelle – 7-cm platform heel Bar – had jewelry or other decorative aspects; associated with flapper culture. Chunky – have a thick heel,. frequently paired with platforms Continental – 7.5 mm, with the upper part of the chest of the heel spreading towards the center of the shoe. Cromwell – based on Oliver Cromwell with heel up to . Cuban – similar to the continental heel, but not curved, generally medium height. Unlike the setback heel, the Cuban heel slopes away from the back surface of the shoe. New Look in 1947 – a slim, elegant heel, newly created by putting steel in the heel. This enabled the heel to be skinny without snapping. Pantaloon – "similar to Pantaloon pants: the top lift part of the heel is spread out as it extends to the bottom part of the heel, and the waistline of the heel curves inward naturally."