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By William Kremer BBC World Service
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 the 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.
Copyright 2013 Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Canada 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, Norway, 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 painted in 1701 by Hyacinthe Rigaud (Getty Images) 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 five foot four (1.63m).
He supplemented his stature by a further 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 six foot tall (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.
Red soles are back
A child's shoe from the mid-17th Century and a Christian Louboutin from 2007
The 17th Century shoe on the left, which may have been French, was for a child
- its stacked leather heel was painted red to suggest privilege
"An obvious link with Louis XIV and the red sole and heel is Christian
Louboutin's red sole (right), which is today one of the most immediate and
recognisable status symbols," says Helen Persson from the Victoria and Albert
Museum
But while today's fashion designers have a huge array of plastics and metals in
their toolbox, it was an engineering challenge for 17th Century shoemakers to
support the instep on a high heel
One solution was to place the heel very far forward in the shoe - this
effectively transferred the problem from the shoemaker to the wearer
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."
Why are high heels sexy?
Jane Hamilton modelling a swimsuit in heels, 1938
Association Elizabeth Semmelhack believes that high heels began to be seen as
erotic footwear when they came back into fashion in the late 19th Century - the
nude models on French postcards were often wearing them
Biology Dr Helen Fischer, a biological anthropologist at Rutgers University,
says that heels force women into a "natural courting pose" found amongst
mammals, with an arched back and protruding buttocks
Patriarchy Not only do heels transform the way women's bodies look to please
men, they cause them pain and prevent them from running away - radical feminist
Sheila Jeffreys says they are one way in which women are forced to "compensate
for the lack of power that men may be having"
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.
Elizabeth Semmelhack believes that this association with pornography led to
high heels being seen an erotic adornment for women.
Two men wearing modern high heels 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."