A High Heel Shoes Retrospective

The stiletto heel. Many women adore them, others abhor them. For those who love them - and high heels in general - what is the fascination? Is it because women have been told that high heels make them look sexy, fabulous, gorgeous? Indeed, that may be the case. What is the femme fatale without a great pair of high heels? There are countless shoe designers who make it their goal to create shoes that not only look great on a woman, but are works of art and make statements. Take the designs of Manolo Blahnik, Salvatore Ferragamo, and Christian Louboutin. While these men did not invent the high heel, they certainly knew how to design one. However, before exploring that topic, one must look to the past to discover the soul of the high heel; what was its purpose and how did it become high fashion?

The high heel has been around since before Christianity. Its basic purpose was to make the wearer of the shoe taller than others in the crowd. Roman actors wore sandals with wood or cork soles while performing to allow others to see them. During the sixteenth century, heels were also utilized as stirrup holders on riding boots by men in the military. The heels assisted in keeping the rider's foot steady in the stirrup. In that same century, high-heeled shoes made their transition from practical footwear to symbols of style and fashion (and, for some, impracticality) when the very diminutive Italian Catherine d' Medici wore two-inch high-heeled shoes on her wedding day. After d' Medici donned her heels, the style became de rigueur for the earliest fashionistas. Bloody Mary, herself a petite woman, was also a lover of high heels.

Because high heels were impractical for manual labor, they were worn solely by nobility during the courts in 18th century Europe. With that, high heels - crafted from fine leather, velvet and satin, making them very expensive to own - immediately replaced the notion of wearing flat shoes. And although high heels did not disappear completely, for many centuries the heights at which they had been crafted decreased significantly. No longer did they span beyond two inches. During the early part of the 19th century, however, the height of the height of the heel diminished so that Grecian-style sandals became more popular.

While it is now a rare occurrence to witness a man wearing heels, it was not the case during the seventeenth century. Louis XIV wore heels specially made for him by shoemaker Nicholas Lestage from France. The "Louis" heel, some as high as five inches high, were also worn by women. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s it was commonplace for men to wear boots with a small heel. John, Paul, Ringo, and George all wore black boots with the low Cuban heel; in Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta swaggered down the street in low-heeled shoes; and Prince flaunted his appreciation for heels, high and low. The low heel was the fashion piece for men.

What became the fashion piece during the last century as well was the stiletto heel. The word stiletto is defined as a small dagger with a slender, tapering blade. Not only has the stiletto heel been a fashion statement, it has also been a source of controversy as very high heels lost their appeal during the French Revolution; they were seen as a sign of aristocratic excess. In the fifties, the stiletto was viewed as scandalous. It was quite sexual in its shape.

To see the heel of a stiletto shoe, one understands why it was dubbed "stiletto"; the heel is finely - almost dangerously - tapered from the sole to the tip that touches the ground. French shoe designer, Roger Vivier, who worked with Christian Dior, is usually credited with launching two new heel designs - talon choc, the "shock," and talon aiguille, the "needle." The heel of the talon choc is creatively and slightly curved inward toward the arch of the shoe. Soon, Ferragamo, who had made his money and garnered fame for his comfortable shoes, was designing stiletto heels. However, for all its creativity, the new stiletto heels were not durable and broke easily. Despite that drawback, the heel became fashionable.

After many decades, downsides notwithstanding, the stiletto heel has remained popular. The allure of the heel seems to be that the woman wearing the shoe feels sexier and more sensual, despite any pain her feet may feel. The stiletto heel also conjures up the image of the woman who has a hidden dark side - the side of the femme fatale. In the movie Single White Female, Jennifer Jason Leigh's character kills a man with a spiked, silver stiletto heel to the forehead. Once again, one could say that this is the weakness of the stiletto heel.

For wearers of the high heel, however, it is all-important to the overall look of woman, regardless of the controversy surrounding its practicality (or impracticality). The high heel has come a long way from first being worn as a wedding heel to being courted by Louis XIV and other nobles of the European court to being impossibly high, and quite possibly dangerous. Choosing what high heel she would have on her foot, whether it is the designer brands of Ferragamo, Manolo, or Louboutin, gives off an air of being trés chic for the followers of fashion. And in spite of the pain that high heels cause, the many options available allow the woman to assert her own sense of style and, in essence, a sense of self.