大象传媒

Initially, heels graced the feet of men, not women.

Queen Elizabeth I

But Queen Elizabeth I – not one to be outdone by the male powers around her – soon got herself a pair.

We’ve all heard her famous quote, “I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.” Well, it seems she had the shoes of a male monarch too.

The heels were a symbol of her elevation, quite literally lifting her off the ground.

In the early 1800s men were wearing pantaloons – trousers much like a skinny jean that came right down over the ankles, with a loop on the bottom that went under the foot. To keep that loop in place, a heel on the shoe was imperative.

Jane Austen’s pantaloon wearing Mr Darcy, for instance, may well have been a fan of the heel.

The invention of photography was revolutionising pornography – it went from existing only in written form, or as crude cartoons, to becoming real pictures of real people.

In these early pornographic photos the subjects are often still wearing their boots and heels (if little else). Soon the heel began to be associated with the erotic.

Until the 1950s heels were largely made from wood, with the grain of the material running up and down the narrow stem to make it as sturdy as possible.

The wood needed to be strong but also lightweight, which led to beech wood being the favoured choice in the UK and maple wood top dog across the pond.

In 1957 the industry started looking at plastic as a potential replacement and landed on polystyrene as the best option. (That’s compact polystyrene, not the little balls you get in beanbags).

These days heels contain a steel tube as reinforcement with a metal tip on the bottom known in the trade as (rather confusingly) “the top piece.”

“Stiletto” is an Italian word from the 1600s for a type of knife blade or dagger.

The story goes that in 1953 an Italian shoe designer created a pair with a very thin heel and it was brought to his attention that it looked like a stiletto blade.

Although stilettos were invented for killer fashion rather than killing itself, they have been brandished as weapons.

In 2014 an American woman was convicted of murdering her husband by stabbing him with her 5 and a half inch stiletto heel, and sentenced to life in prison.

In late Renaissance Italy and Spain, impractical high heels or “chopines” were a sign of wealth. The higher the heel, the longer and more elaborate the dress required to cover them, and the more servants needed to make walking possible.

The tallest “chopines” in existence today are a Venetian pair measuring nearly 50cm. The owner would have had a servant on either arm to keep her stable and stop her toppling in to the canal.