Function, Fashion & Controversy: The History of the High Heel

Thank the Middle Eastern Calvary for Your Jimmy Choos

Prologue: On Being Tall

I have a love-hate relationship with heels. Standing at 5’10”, I’m used to being among the tallest in the room, so the thought of adding another two or three inches, no matter the occasion, often feels unnecessary, even obnoxious. It’s possible that my aversion to height stems from middle school flashbacks of being at eye-level (at the very least) with most of the boys in my grade. It wasn’t until I moved to New York, a place where nobody cares if you’re roaming the streets barefoot or in 10-inch moon boots, that I finally embraced my height. 

Even still, I was curious to know where the concept of the heel came from. Who thought a shoe that shifted the majority of the wearer’s weight to the balls of their feet, inducing hours of pain on-end, would be a good idea? I intended to find out. To my surprise, the start of this investigation took me to the faraway pastures of 10th century Iran.

Equestrian Roots

While the modern heels of today are often accessories for formal, flashier affairs, the earliest reported model of the shoe served a highly practical function and was worn by bow-yielding men. 

That’s right. Turns out the 10th century Persian cavalry were early pioneers of the shoe type, donning heeled riding shoes known as galesh, which served the specific function of fastening the soldier’s feet into stirrups so they could fight more effectively on horseback. It is no surprise, then, that the modern day cowboy boot was derived from this very model and continues to serve a similar function. 

The shoe eventually made its way to other parts of the world when, at the turn of the 17th century, the Persian Shah sent soldiers to Western Europe to forge diplomatic relations, spurring widespread interest and adoption of Persian culture and fashion upon their arrival. 

From Function to Fashion  

By the 1600s, heels were highly popular among European aristocrats and became a means for projecting one’s wealth and status, marking an official pivot away from its initially functional use. To parade around in these cumbersome shoes signaled that you certainly weren’t a street merchant struggling to make ends meet, nor a farmer spending all day tending to crops. 

During this time, King Louis XIV of France—standing at a modest 5 feet 4 inches—became a particularly well-known champion of the shoe and even adopted his own signature red heel that he, in rather ‘Mean Girl’ fashion, permitted only his inner circle wear. The adoption of heels among the wealthy was used to communicate a broader attitude of the time, which was that class and status were considered the defining aspect of a person’s identity. Accordingly, the elite used clothing as a way to express one’s wealth and make their status known through extravagant props like costumes, wigs and of course heeled shoes. 

Another trend at the time was for women to occasionally adopt parts of the male wardrobe, which included everything from chopping their hair and smoking pipes, to wearing men’s hats. While these weren’t so much activism attempts as they were simply bold wardrobe choices, this eventually led to the heel becoming a normalized staple among both genders. It wasn’t until the late 1600s that styles based on gender began to diverge, where men’s heels became lower and squarer, and women’s taller and slimmer.

An End to Androgynous Footwear

As the 17th century concluded and brought with it the ‘Age of Reason’ (otherwise known as The Enlightenment), so too did norms around what defined a person’s identity. Gone were the days of celebrating those who were born into wealth and status. Now, education and intellect were what truly mattered. But while males were viewed as rational and practical by nature, women were viewed as emotional; extravagant; fluffy. 

This put an official end to androgynous fashion, and by the mid-1700s men had stopped wearing heels almost entirely, instead opting for more monochrome, practical footwear. The period is coined as the ‘Great Male Renunciation’—but we can aptly call it the Great Bore—where the flashier, bolder accessories were dropped from the male wardrobe, resulting in a clearer distinction between how both genders dressed. Heels had suddenly assumed a new meaning of pretentiousness and frivolousness, now only seemingly appropriate for women. This marked the beginnings of the notion that the heel is a primarily feminine shoe, a belief that has largely remained to this day. 

But heels would soon disappear altogether after the turn of the French and American Revolution, and it wasn’t until the mid 19th century that they would make a comeback. This was much thanks to the emergence of budding photographic technology, which became an influential tool for the fashion space and the way the industry constructed and portrayed the female image. Notably, pornographers were among the earliest adopters of the camera, using them to take photos of nude subjects in heels. It was this risque photographic experimentation, in fact, that many point to as the origins behind the erotic association that comes with heels today.

The Birth of the Modern Stiletto 

Up until this point, heels were typically made from wood, which placed a limit on how thin the stilts could go while still being able to support the wearer’s weight. That was until designers in the 1950s began experimenting with inserting steel rods into the shafts of the heel. With rods, heels could be much higher, thinner and placed closer to the end of the foot while remaining secure for the wearer.

One of earliest adopters of this technique was Dior designer Roger Vivier, whose experimentation with heels for the brand led to the wide-spread take off of the stiletto, which translates to ‘thin dagger’ in Italian. With Dior’s stamp of approval, the model quickly gained popularity among the masses and spurred other creations that have since set the modern blueprint for the heels we know and love today, including those of Jimmy Choo, Christian Louboutin and Alexander McQueen. 

While at this point, heels were primarily perceived to be a women’s shoe, amidst the pinnacle of 70s counterculture and the explosive age of rock, it’s worth noting that popular male artists of the time, from Bowie to Elton John to Prince, could be seen parading around stage wearing extravagant heels and outfits that boldly pushed back against the gender-conforming wardrobes of the times, trialblazing a more non-binary form of dress. 

Oppressive or Empowering? 

As with anything that is so deeply integrated into the history of gender norms, the heel has not come without its own controversies. Perhaps the most ardent opposition to the shoe—outside of its notoriety for discomfort, blisters and the potential to induce early forms of arthritis—comes from the feminist POV which argues that the shoe is an oppressive product of patriarchal culture. Critics point to the way in which the heel changes one’s posture, sexualizing the wearer’s body shape and walk and creating an instability that makes the person more vulnerable; as Christian Louboutin once put it, the heels slow the woman down, giving the man more time to look at her.

Despite this rather sleazy interpretation of the shoe, it would be difficult to ignore the argument that heels are also considered a tool for empowerment and a signal for authority. Think the modern ‘girl boss’, whose caricature can be pictured in a blazer pant-suit ensemble, a bold lip color and a pair of four-inch-minimum stilettos, whose impending clicking and clacking audibly announce her approach to any board room. 

The New Rule in Fashion: There Are None

From the 10th century soldier who needed a better way to cling to his horse, to the modern day female executive looking to make an impression in the workplace, the history of the heel is a reflection of the way our societal values have shifted over time and a case study for how our clothing reflects those changes. 

Today’s fashion scene is simply a continuation of these ongoing shifts; in stark contrast to the social signaling wardrobes of the 1600s, nowadays there’s a greater emphasis on using dress as a medium for self-expression, often prioritizing risk and experimentation over conformity. (This, to be fair, is not always the case outside of American culture). This means the rules about who can wear what, how things are worn and what those choices reflect about a person become seemingly obsolete. Isn’t style subjective, after all?

With that in mind, when it comes to the controversy around heels, perhaps it’s ultimately up to the wearer to decide: Do they make them feel oppressed or empowered? I find myself leaning towards the latter. The act of getting dressed is a conscious choice we get to make every day; it’s an opportunity to become, or at least try on, different versions of ourselves. So if one day you’re in the mood to feel a little taller or want to accentuate your figure, who’s to say that throwing on a pair of heels is doing anything other than using dress as a means of self exploration? 

If this investigation has proven anything, it is the age-old cliche that change is in fact constant. In the coming decades, our values and how we place our identities within society will undoubtedly evolve once more, ushering in a new set of trends that will influence what we wear down to the shoes on our feet. Perhaps the heel—or some variation of it—will once again become a normalized staple in the male wardrobe, and a lot sooner than we think.