High Heels: High-Altitude Allure

If we think about women's fashion, there are many garments capable of giving a woman that sense of elegance and power that is often sought after. The choice frequently falls on the combination of a shirt and a pantsuit: when a woman enters a room dressed this way, an aura of control and confidence is immediately perceived, transmitted precisely by the rigour of such an outfit. In this sense, one is always in a constant and almost obsessive search for the perfect garment.

However, the same impact can also be achieved by simply wearing jeans and a sweater. Because true elegance can also be obtained thanks to a single, individual detail. There is in fact an accessory capable of completely overturning an outfit, changing the posture, and even the attitude of the wearer. As you have already guessed from the cover image, I am talking about a pair of high heels—an object of cult, a symbol of seduction, but also an instrument of power and sometimes at the centre of heated debates. High heels are much more than mere footwear.

In this article, we will take a complete journey into the world of elevated footwear: from its technical definition to its millennia-long history, all the way to understanding why it still exerts an irresistible magnetism today and how much the global market revolving around it is worth.

What are high heels?

On a purely technical level, a shoe with a heel is footwear in which the heel sits at a height significantly higher than the toes. I know it may seem like an all too obvious definition, but it was necessary to be truly exhaustive.

This shape, which forces the foot into an unnatural position, shifts the body's centre of gravity forward, modifying the walk and the silhouette. Anyone can do an immediate test: just stand on your tiptoes and try to walk. You will immediately notice how the body tends to lose balance forward; on the bright side, you gain a few centimetres and feel decisively slender. Up to this point, we are talking about physical concepts and details known to everyone. Personally, from here on out, I am entering a field in which I have always been perfectly ignorant. While for a woman, what I am about to write is obvious, almost trivial; for me as a man, discovering that not all heels are the same was quite surprising. I mean, I know well that different sizes exist, but I had no idea that they had a specific name: to me, simply, they had always all been just "heels". The fashion world, instead, counts them by the dozens, each with its own precise identity. Doing a bit of research on the web, I tried to group and understand the main macro-categories.

• Stiletto heel: This was already part of my universe of knowledge. Extremely thin and slender, it can vary from 7 to over 12 centimetres. It is the absolute icon of sensuality, beautiful to look at. For me, however, it remains "that long, thin one" to be looked at with a fearful and worried eye, associated with a constant alarm for the risk of a sprained ankle.

• Block or square heel: For the male universe, the classic "thick heel". Generally, it does not reach vertiginous heights—even though there is no shortage of conspicuous exceptions—and precisely because it is wide and solid, it offers greater stability. If it is low, it is the undisputed king of daily comfort. If, on the other hand, it turns out to be high, as is often seen in today's fashion, the back and legs will pay the price, resulting in heaviness and pain at the end of the day.

• Kitten heel: A mini heel (usually between 3 and 5 cm), rounded at the top, narrower in the centre, and flared out again at the bottom. It has come back into fashion with a vengeance for its bon tonne elegance. I admit that, before doing this research, I had the slightest idea of what it was. Now that I know, when you boil it down, it is still a low heel.

• The Wedge and the Platform: Often confused, they are the wizards of height. The wedge distributes the elevation across the entire sole of the foot, reducing its slant. It was huge in the '90s: I remember that when I was a child, a great many girls wore these shoes, often characterised by cork or rope bases. The platform, on the other hand, is the conspicuous elevation positioned right under the toes, which allows one to sport very high heels without excessively slanting the foot. It is the typical imposing structure often seen in movies or scenes of the adult entertainment industry.

  
  

From origins to the present day: An unexpected history.

But how was the heel born? Why have women deliberately chosen to hurt themselves just to look more beautiful? And when did they decide that it would be a great idea?

When I was writing the history and informed myself for a moment, I realised I was completely off track because the heel is not female footwear, like the bikini or lingerie. If you think that shoes with a heel originated as a female accessory for modern vanity, you are off track. Their history is rooted in functionality and power. For centuries—and this detail is incredible—footwear with a heel was dominated by men. Yes, you understood correctly; in the past it was men who wore heels! You don't believe me. Read for a moment!

The military origin and Persian horsemen.

The first true ancestors of the heel date back to ancient Persia (modern-day Iran) around the 10th century. Persian horsemen wore boots with a heel for a purely practical reason: to secure the foot better in the stirrups during battles on horseback, ensuring perfect stability to shoot arrows.

If you have never ridden a horse, it is hard to imagine: the base of the stirrup is smooth. It goes without saying that if you were to wear common modern flat-soled shoes while galloping, the first thing that would happen would be losing your foothold, slipping forward with the concrete risk of falling and getting badly hurt. The standard-issue heel of Persian soldiers was therefore born as a true piece of military safety equipment.

Even today in the modern equestrian world, riding boots still maintain a square heel of a couple of centimetres for the exact same safety reason: to prevent the foot from slipping too far forward and getting stuck in the stirrup in case of a fall.

The heel as a status symbol.

When Persian delegations arrived at European courts at the beginning of the 17th century, Western nobility was literally struck by such exotic footwear. It makes you smile to think about how times and customs change: if today that same diplomatic delegation presented itself at an international summit dressed that way—among lace, silk stockings, and high heels—it would be considered eccentric or totally outside the box of contemporary masculinity. Yet, at the time, it was the equivalent of maximum vigour and martial virility.

In Europe, the heel quickly lost its military function to transform into an absolute symbol of wealth and power: those who were wealthy had no need whatsoever to walk in the mud of city streets or to break their backs in the fields. Those who mattered went on horseback or in a carriage, and precisely because of this original link with riding and stirrups, shoes with a heel became the main mark of distinction between the nobility and the common people.

The King of France, Louis XIV, the famous Sun King, made it his own personal trademark. Being anything but a giant, the monarch used heels to increase his stature and physically dominate the court as well, going so far as to decree that only members of the royal circle closest to him could wear heels rigorously coated in red.

The transition to the female wardrobe.

Up to this point in history, we are talking exclusively about men strutting on heels to appear rich, powerful, and dominant. I confess to you that even just writing these lines makes me feel projected into a universe that is decidedly "eccentric and alternative" compared to the standards we are used to today.

But in all of this, what were women doing? One would think that while monarchs walked on red heels, women wore comfortable flat-soled footwear. Nothing could be more wrong.

If men exaggerated with height, high-society women did even worse. Between the 15th and 17th centuries, throughout Europe—and particularly in Venice—chopines were all the rage. What are Chopin's? Objects of the devil and of pure aristocratic delirium. They were shoes characterised by structurally colossal wooden or cork wedges, capable of reaching vertiginous heights, from 15 to exceeding 30 centimetres. They were not designed for walking: they served to protect the expensive fabrics of dresses from the mud of the streets and to shout one's social status to the world. The richer you were, the higher your wedge was, to the point that noblewomen literally had to be supported by two servants so as not to take a memorable tumble.

The shift of women to the proper heel—the slender, geometric one, no longer the stilt-like wedge of the Chopine—would happen during the 17th century, and it was born as a true act of cultural provocation. Around 1630, in the midst of the Baroque period, a strongly androgynous trend spread among the noblewomen of European courts. Well before the Enlightenment, we are looking at the very first, timid signs of women starting to ask questions and challenge the rigid rules of the patriarchal system of the time.

In an attempt to claim an equality of status, women thought that appropriating the visual symbols of male power was an excellent move. In the Baroque period, women of the aristocratic circle began to cut their hair short, smoke pipes, wear military-style hats and, finally, introduce heels into their wardrobe. Elevated footwear, thus, ceased to be a horseman's exclusive and became an instrument of female emancipation and seduction, capable of combining elegance with boldness.

The true line of demarcation between the male heel and the female heel was drawn at the end of the 18th century, with the advent of the Enlightenment and the explosion of the French Revolution. This historical period brought about what fashion sociologists call the "Great Male Renunciation". The emerging bourgeoisie, which saw the aristocracy as a parasitic class and the primary cause of general misery, radically repudiated the aesthetics of the court. That universe of pageantry was considered ridiculous, but above all, the intolerable image of a dark period made of abuses, denigration, poverty, and suffering for the people.

With Louis XVI guillotined, men progressively abandoned wigs, makeup, lace, and high heels. In their place, the new ruling class adopted sober, practical, and dark clothing—the ancestors of today's jacket and tie suit. Parallelly, across the Channel, the philosophy of Dandyism developed, which elevated this male minimalism into a true art form, replacing the old Baroque excesses with flat leather boots and impeccable sartorial cuts.

From that moment on, everything that was ornament or artifice was labelled as "frivolous" and delegated exclusively to the female world (at the time, women were considered frivolous, light beings, not worthy of equality). The heel thus radically changed meaning: it lost once and for all its original link with the political and military power of men to become the symbol par excellence of femininity, grace, and seduction.

To witness the birth of the heel as we know it today, we have to make a leap forward to the 1950s, in the full aftermath of World War II. With the desire for rebirth and the urge to leave austere wartime rationing behind, fashion exploded into a new celebration of shapes. It was in this climate that the stiletto heel was born, a true miracle of design and footwear engineering.

Before then, heels were low (aside from the Venetian madness) and made of wood, a material that did not allow dropping below a certain thickness without risking breaking. Visionary geniuses of footwear like Roger Vivier for the house of Dior and the Italian Salvatore Ferragamo revolutionised the sector by introducing a structural innovation: a thin core of moulded steel inserted inside the heel. This intuition, borrowed from aeronautical engineering, made it possible to create extremely high and incredibly thin heels, capable of holding the weight of the human body by concentrating it into a single, millimetric point of pressure. The stiletto immediately became the icon of golden Hollywood, loved by divas like Marilyn Monroe, and definitively sanctioned the entry of the heel into the modern era.

Psychology of the heel: why is it so loved?

The link between women (and fashion lovers) and shoes with a heel is visceral. But what hides behind this attraction?

The first great effect that the heel grants is a visual one, capable of instantly modifying posture and, reflectively, self-esteem. The trick is damn simple: by lifting the heel, the centre of gravity shifts, the back arches naturally, the chest is pushed out, and the calf muscles tighten, defining the leg.

This physical change immediately reflects on the mind: one feels taller, prouder, and more self-confident. For many women, wearing a pair of high heels is a true psychological "armour" to face the world, an important business meeting, or a special evening. On the flip side of the coin, however, there are the inevitable physical side effects. This slender lift often translates into aching ankles, heavily tested joints, and a back that is, in fact, forced to sustain the body weight in a completely unnatural way, paying the bill at the end of the day.

The language of seduction: Many evolutionary studies have analysed how heel height alters the centre of gravity, forces shorter and more frequent steps, and accentuates the tilt of the pelvis, increasing the lateral and vertical sway of the hips. Visually, it is a postural modification that simulates and accentuates traits linked to femininity and the dynamics of movement. It is an undeniable visual catalyst. You don't believe me? Look at how a woman walks in sandals and how one walks in heels. Which of the two has a seductive air? Not the one in sandals... unless one is a fetishist, in which case a woman can walk however she wants, as long as the foot is in sight.

The heel as an art form: For many enthusiasts, collecting shoes with a heel is equivalent to collecting true miniature sculptures. In this realm, comfort often takes a back seat compared to geometric beauty, the purity of lines, and the boldness of the shoe's design. Great designers have repeatedly admitted that a shoe must first of all thrill the eye, even before the foot.

This explains a very widespread phenomenon: how many women, of all ages, have closets or shoe racks full of heels of every shape and colour, purchased sometimes just for the aesthetic pleasure of owning them? Marvellous shoes, perhaps worn only once for an event or even never used, but which remain there, kept like small treasures of contemporary art to be admired every time the closet is opened.

The turnover: a multi-billion dollar market.

Behind passion and aesthetics moves a gigantic economic industry. The luxury and high-heel footwear sector experiences almost no crisis, driven both by heritage brands and new digital trends.

The global market numbers.

The women's footwear market moves hundreds of billions of dollars a year in total. Specifically, the formal and high-heel shoe segment maintains a very solid market share. Despite the boom in sneakers and athleisure style (which exploded in recent years), the elegant footwear market has shown extraordinary resilience, with constant growth rates driven mainly by the Asia-Pacific and North American regions.

The giants of the sector and the "Icon Factor".

The turnover is pushed by a pyramid of brands where the high end dictates the rules: Cult brands: Names like Christian Louboutin, Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, and Gianvito Rossi invoice hundreds of millions of euros a year, selling not just shoes but true status symbols (with retail prices starting from €600 up to exceeding €3,000 a pair). Fast Fashion: Brands like Zara and Mango and e-commerce giants replicate runway trends at a dizzying pace, making the style democratic and accessible to all budgets, fuelling continuous mass consumption.

New challenges: comfort and sustainability.

Today, the business is changing direction. Consumers are loudly demanding comfortable heels. This has pushed companies to invest millions in research and development to create ergonomic insoles, flexible materials, and heels with integrated shock absorbers. Furthermore, the challenge of the future is sustainability: the production of shoes with a heel, historically complex due to the assembly of plastic, metal (in the heel), and leather, is slowly converting to the use of recycled and cruelty-free materials.

Little Thoughts.

Shoes with a heel have crossed centuries, changing skin, gender, and meaning. Born for war, turned into a symbol of nobility, and finally an emblem of femininity and elegance, it continues to dominate runways and streets all over the world.

Whether they are worn for an important business meeting, for a special evening, or simply for the pleasure of seeing oneself differently in front of the mirror, one thing is certain: shoes with a heel will never stop making us look at the world from another perspective.

M.