Fashion Fact: How Did High Heels Come Into Being?

| on October 16, 2015

"High heels are pleasure with pain." These golden words were spoken by the great Christian Louboutin and we have got to agree! This designer is one brilliant guy and no woman's wardrobe is complete without a red-soled Louboutin!

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High-heeled footwear (often abbreviated as high heels or simply heels) is footwear that raises the heel of the wearer's foot significantly higher than the toes. This is one of the most gorgeous and sexy ways one can dress their feet. There are 'low heels', 'mid heels' and 'high heels', the term 'high heels' covers heels ranging from 2 to 5 inches (5.1 to 12.7 cm) or more. Anything higher than this and they'll no longer be called footwear but something like 'jewellery for the feet'.

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Want to know more? Let's talk a bit about the history of heeled footwear. What were the ancestors to contemporary high heels? Medieval Europeans wore wooden-soled patten shoes. Elizabeth Semmelhack, curator at Toronto's Bata Shoe Museum, traces the high heel to Persian horse riders in the Near East who used high heels for functionality, because they helped hold the rider's foot in stirrups. She states that this footwear is depicted on a 9th-century ceramic bowl from Persia.

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Since the Second World War, high heels have fallen in and out of popular fashion trend several times, most notably in the late 1990s, when lower heels and even flats predominated. In the 21st century we have realised that heels are definitely in trend, always! We have a variety to choose from; cone heels, kitten heels, prism heels, puppy heels, spool heels, stilettos and wedges.