Why did men stop wearing high heels?
25 January 2013 Last updated at 00:45 GMT
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.
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.
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).
Louis XIV wearing his trademark heels in a 1701 portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud
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 favour with the
king was to glance downwards. In practice, unauthorised, 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, stacky heel, while
women's heels became more slender, more curvaceous."
Why are high heels sexy?
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, 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 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."
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