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 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 favor with the king was to glance downwards. In practice, unauthorized,
imitation heels were available.
Red soles are back
- 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, stocky
heel, while women's heels became more slender, more curvaceous."
Why are high heels sexy?
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 jewelry, bright colors
and ostentatious fabrics in favor 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 uneducated. 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
favor 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 colored 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."
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