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Evolution of High Heels: From Venice Prostitutes to Stilettos

Rachel Kruge
Mar 30, 2016
2 min read

If high heels cause so much pain why do we even wear them? But we all know that beauty is pain. Lets take a step back and see wear these shoes first began. High heels were not just made on the spot they evolved over time. And we begin the 1400s where a shoe named the Chopines was made. These very high platform shoe, sometimes as high as 18 inches, were used by women prostitutes to show status between themselves and their clients. Eventually it was used by the wealthy and it showed that you didn’t need to work or walk for that matter.

In 1590 we moved to our real first heel. The origin has been debated but we do know that Queen Elizabeth I was the first to wear them. We believe this is true because she was wearing a pair in a painting and Janet Arnold, a clothing historian wrote a list of the queen’s clothes from 1595. In the picture it shows the straps called “latches” which was an early form of shoelaces. Then unlike before the 1660s where men and women wore almost the same shoes, men’s shoe became more practical and women’s became more ornate.

We then move on to the red heel in the 1670s or as we might call it “the first Louboutins!” We can

thank King Louis XIV for starting this red bottom trend. Then in the 1750s a heel called Pompadour’s were named after Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of King Louis XV, and even then these shoes were made for style and not comfort. She designed the shoe with curved more narrow heel which made it much harder to walk in. This style spread from Paris to all

across Europe. In the 1840s, maybe because of the revolutions in America and France they rejected the royalty ways and decided to “go flat”. The popular look was the ballet slippers and supposedly the wife of Napoleon was said to have owned over 300 pairs of these shoes.

Soon after, in the 1850s the heel came back into style. The heel slowly got bigger, ½ an inch In 1851 to 2 ½ by 1860. The use of brass in the heel later on allowed heels to get even taller. Last but not least we have the stiletto which was produced in 1953 and was designed and invented by both Christian Dior and Roger Vivier. Roger was the one who invented this skinny heel, which he called “the needle”. This

shoe helped to create the modern sex symbol and one of those symbols was Marilyn Monroe who supposedly shaved off a little from one of her stilettos so that she would walk with a wiggle.