Heel (shoe)
Encyclopedia
A heel is the projection at the back of a shoe
Shoe
A shoe is an item of footwear intended to protect and comfort the human foot while doing various activities. Shoes are also used as an item of decoration. The design of shoes has varied enormously through time and from culture to culture, with appearance originally being tied to function...

 which rests below the heel bone. The shoe heel is used to improve the balance of the shoe or for decorative purposes. Sometimes raised, the high heel is common to a form of shoe often worn by women but sometimes by men too. See also stiletto heel
Stiletto heel
A stiletto heel is a long, thin, high heel found on some boots and shoes, usually for women. It is named after the stiletto dagger, the phrase being first recorded in the early 1930s...

.

History

High heels are not a modern invention. Rather, they enjoy a rich and varied history, for both men as well as women. Controversy exists over when high heels were first invented, but the consensus is that heels were worn by both men and women throughout the world for many centuries and for a variety of reasons.

Although high heeled shoes
High-heeled shoe
High-heeled footwear is footwear that raises the heel of the wearer's foot significantly higher than the toes. When both the heel and the toes are raised equal amounts, as in a platform shoe, it is technically not considered to be a high heel; however, there are also high-heeled platform shoes...

 are depicted in ancient Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

ian murals on tombs and temples, the earliest recorded instance of men or women wearing an elevated shoe comes from Hellenic
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

 times. It is suspected that the wear of an elevated sole, or heel, occurred centuries before, but there is little direct evidence to support this, although there is indeed much indirect evidence that lends credence to the use of high heels by both men and women for many reasons.

It has been commonly stated that the first instance of the wear of high heels involved the 1533 marriage between Catherine de' Medici
Catherine de' Medici
Catherine de' Medici was an Italian noblewoman who was Queen consort of France from 1547 until 1559, as the wife of King Henry II of France....

 with the Duke of Orleans
Henry II of France
Henry II was King of France from 31 March 1547 until his death in 1559.-Early years:Henry was born in the royal Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, the son of Francis I and Claude, Duchess of Brittany .His father was captured at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 by his sworn enemy,...

. She wore heels made in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

 for her wedding, and as a result, Italian high heels became the norm for ladies of the Duke's court in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. Unfortunately, this reference may be apocryphal, as the development of heels did not begin to come about until the late 1580s, based on iconographic evidence and extant pieces.

Mary Tudor
Mary I of England
Mary I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death.She was the only surviving child born of the ill-fated marriage of Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon. Her younger half-brother, Edward VI, succeeded Henry in 1547...

, another short monarch, wore heels as high as possible. From this period until the early 19th century, high heels are frequently in vogue for both sexes.

Around 1660, a shoemaker named Nicholas Lestage designed high heeled shoes for Louis XIV
Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...

. Some were more than four inches (ten cm), and most were decorated in various battle scenes. The resulting high "Louis heels" subsequently became fashionable for ladies. Today the term is used to refer to heels with a concave curve and outward taper at the bottom similar to those worn by Madame de Pompadour
Madame de Pompadour
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, also known as Madame de Pompadour was a member of the French court, and was the official chief mistress of Louis XV from 1745 to her death.-Biography:...

, Louis XV's
Louis XV of France
Louis XV was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death. He succeeded his great-grandfather at the age of five, his first cousin Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, served as Regent of the kingdom until Louis's majority in 1723...

 mistress. (They are also sometimes called "Pompadour heels".)

The late 18th-Century trend toward lower heels had much to do with the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

. During the revolution, high heels became associated with opulence. Since people wished to avoid the appearance of wealth, heels were largely eliminated from the common market for both men and women. In the wake of the French Revolution heels become lower than at any time in the 18th century.

Male wear

Although high-heeled shoes or boots have more often been worn by women, in various times and places they have been standard features of men's footwear too, either for practical reasons or as fashionable items.

Mongolian horsemen were among the first to use heels as means to keep their feet from sliding out of their stirrup
Stirrup
A stirrup is a light frame or ring that holds the foot of a rider, attached to the saddle by a strap, often called a stirrup leather. Stirrups are usually paired and are used to aid in mounting and as a support while using a riding animal...

s. It is also well known that Egyptian butcher
Butcher
A butcher is a person who may slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat or any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat, poultry, fish and shellfish for sale in retail or wholesale food establishments...

s wore high heels so they would not step directly in offal
Offal
Offal , also called, especially in the United States, variety meats or organ meats, refers to the internal organs and entrails of a butchered animal. The word does not refer to a particular list of edible organs, which varies by culture and region, but includes most internal organs other than...

.

Actors playing tragic roles in ancient Greek drama wore the buskin
Buskin
A buskin is a knee- or calf-length boot made of leather or cloth which laces closed, but is open across the toes. It was worn by Athenian tragic actors, hunters and soldiers in Ancient Greek, Etruscan, and Roman societies....

, a boot with a platform sole, designed to give them greater height over other actors.

The Romans, both men and women, wore cothurns, or sandals with platform heels; these were intended to lift the wearers above mud and garbage in the streets. Geta
Geta (footwear)
Geta are a form of traditional Japanese footwear that resemble both clogs and flip-flops. They are a kind of sandal with an elevated wooden base held onto the foot with a fabric thong to keep the foot well above the ground. They are worn with traditional Japanese clothing such as kimono or yukata,...

, which are based on a similar concept, are still used in Japan today.

American cowboy boots, first developed in the 19th century and still popular today in some parts of the United States, have high underslung heels to keep a rider's foot from sliding through the stirrup.

High-heeled platform shoe
Platform shoe
Platform shoes are shoes, boots, or sandals with thick soles at least four inches in height, often made of cork, plastic, rubber, or wood...

s were a widely popular form of men's footwear during the 1970s.

Types of heels

  • Flat heel
  • Low Heel
  • Chunky heel
  • Kitten heel
    Kitten heel
    A kitten heel is a short, slender heel, usually from 3.5 centimeters to 4.75 centimeters high with a slight curve setting the heel in from the edge of the shoe. The style was popularized by Audrey Hepburn.-Definition:...

  • Stiletto heel
    Stiletto heel
    A stiletto heel is a long, thin, high heel found on some boots and shoes, usually for women. It is named after the stiletto dagger, the phrase being first recorded in the early 1930s...

  • Cone heel
  • Spool Heel
    Spool Heel
    A spool heel is a heel that is wide at the top and bottom and narrower in the middle, so resembling a cotton reel. Spool heels were fashionable in Europe during the Baroque and Rococo periods. Other periods of popularity include the 1860s and the 1950s. Spool heels are characterized by an hourglass...

  • Wedge
    Wedge boots
    Wedge boots or wedgies are boots with a sole in the form of a wedge so that one piece of material, normally rubber, serves as both the sole and the heel. Wedge boots are more common for women and often have a sole that is much thicker at the back than the front, making it a high-heel shoe or boot...


External links

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