How the Heel Came About

In ancient Greece, actors performing on stage wore sandals made of wood or cork. These devices were called cothurni. Thus, they increased their height.

In Europe, during the Middle Ages, stilted shoes were invented, consisting of a wooden sole with leather straps, to move comfortably through streets that were flooded with mud and filth. Europeans called such shoes – sabots. In the East, similar footwear was worn in baths to avoid burning one’s feet on the hot floor. All of these were the first attempts to increase one’s height and rise as high as possible above the ground.

So who was the first to think of putting us in heels? It is believed that the progenitor of the heel was the wife of the Duke of Orleans (the future King Henry II) – Catherine de’ Medici. She was of short stature and felt uncomfortable next to her husband. One day, she noticed the Duke’s riding shoes, which had fairly high heels, or rather, cutouts between the sole and the heel. These cutouts were intended for the stirrup. Catherine came up with the idea to order similar shoes for herself, only with a higher heel. This was in the 16th century. At that time, the fashion for women’s heels did not take hold. The reason was the long dresses. The female gaze turned back to the heel only after a century, when fashion significantly shortened the dresses.

The fashion for very high and rather thin heels for the nobility was introduced by the famous Marquise de Pompadour, the mistress of King Louis XV. Strangely enough, she was also of short stature and, being the king’s favorite, allowed herself to dictate the fashion of the time. The beautiful marquise did not allow the fashion for heels to fade away.

The French Revolution brought with it a fashion for simplification. At that time, many details of women’s attire fell out of fashion. This also affected heels – they remained in the past. It was only in the 19th century that heels began to make a comeback as a fashionable element of footwear.

Who and when invented the stiletto heel is not precisely known. It is believed that it was the Italian shoemaker Salvatore Ferragamo. He came up with the idea of attaching a thin heel, known as a stiletto, to shoes. The French fashion house Dior introduced a collection of women’s heels of various heights and thicknesses in 1955. Its creator was the French shoe designer Roger Vivier.

The stiletto heel turned all concepts of women’s shoe fashion upside down. In the post-war years, longing for beauty, tired of the hardships of wartime, women literally flocked to stilettos. Such footwear firmly entered our lives, and to this day, stiletto shoes dazzle fashion lovers around the globe. And it seems that these heels are not going to relinquish their positions that were won through “sweat and blood.”

 

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