Raised heels came about circa 1500 as a response to the problem of the horse rider's foot slipping forward in stirrups while riding. The simple riding heel was the starting point for a more stylized heel over its first three decades. Starting with the French, heel heights among men crept up, often becoming higher and thinner, until they were no longer useful while riding, and became "court-only" footwear. By the late 1600s, men's heels were between three and four inches in height.
In 1533, the diminutive wife of the Duke of Orleans, Catherine de' Medici, commissioned a cobbler to design a pair of heels, both for fashion, and to increase her stature. They were an adaptation of chopines (elevated wooden soles with both heel and toe raised not unlike modern platform shoes), but unlike chopines the heel was higher than the toe and the "platform" was made to bend in the middle with the foot.
High-heeled shoes quickly caught on with the fashion-conscious men and women of the French court, and spread to pockets of nobility in other countries. The term "well-heeled" became synonymous with opulent wealth. Both men and women continued wearing heels as a matter of noble fashion throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When the French Revolution drew near, in the late 1700s, the practice of wearing heels fell into decline in France due to its associations with wealth and aristocracy. Throughout most of the 1800s, flat shoes and sandals were usual for both sexes, but the heel resurfaced in fashion during the late 1800s, almost exclusively among women.
The stiletto heel came with the advent of technology using a supporting metal shaft within the heel, instead of wood or other, weaker materials that required a wide heel.
A stiletto heel/spike heel (which is by far my favourite) is a long, thin heel. Its name comes from the stiletto dagger. Stiletto heels vary from 2.5 centimetres (1 inch) to 20 cm (8 inches) high and sometimes have a diameter at the ground of less than 1 cm (slightly less than half an inch). The shorter heeled version are more commonly known as kitten heels.
Stiletto heels are often associated with the image of the femme fatale. They are often considered to be a seductive item of clothing. Stilettos give the optical illusion of a longer, slimmer leg, a smaller foot, and a greater overall height (and for a woman who is only 5’ 2”/1.55m high that can make a huge difference). They also change the wearer's posture and walk, flexing the calf muscles, and making the bust and buttocks more prominent.
Some people think that stiletto heels cause wearers to be much less stable than wider high heels due to the small diameter of the heel. This is a fallacy. The act of balancing in a high, thin-heeled shoe occurs at the front of the foot, not at the heel. A high wide heeled shoe with a deep, rigid platform sole may feel sturdy when stationary, but is more likely to completely capsize and cause the ankle to sprain or fracture, as opposed to a teetering stiletto shoe with a thin flexible sole may appear to wobble and tremble, but does not have the disastrous "point of no return". There is a myth that regular wear of stiletto heels causes leg, hip and back problems. Provided the design of the stiletto shoe is good and balanced, the higher the heel, e.g. four inch heels, the more delicately the wearer walks, primarily on tiptoe, thus placing very little weight down on her heel. Stress damage to the skeleton due to walking impact during prolonged wear is far more likely to occur with the harmless-looking, low to medium stiletto heel many women favour for all-day wear. This permits a more normal walk, takes more of the wearer's weight than a higher heel, and transmits the force of that concentrated weight into the ground sharply when walking, thus causing shock waves up the spine.
Physicists at the Institute of Physics ( London, UK) have devised a formula based on your shoe size that tells you the maximum height of heel you can wear! Read on ladies, this gets really interesting.
h = Q•(12+3s /8)
h is the maximum height of the heel (in cm)
Q is a sociological factor and has a value between 0 and 1 (see below to work this out)
S is the shoe size ( UK ladies sizes). This factor makes sure that the base of support is just good enough for an experienced and sober, high-heel wearer not to fall over.
'Q' is defined as follows:
p•(y+9)•L
Q = ----------------------------------
(t+1)•(A+1)•(y+10)•(L+£20)
The variables are:
p – the probability that wearing the shoes will help you 'pull' (in a range from 0 to 1, where 1 is extra hot and 0 is stick to carpet slippers). If the shoes are a turn-off, there's no point wearing them.
y – the number of years experience you have in wearing high heels. As you become more adept, you can wear a higher heel. Beginners should take it easy.
L – the cost of the shoes, in pounds. Clearly, if the shoe is particularly expensive, you can put up with a higher heel.
t – the time since the shoe was the height of fashion, in months (0 = it's the 'in thing' right now!). One has to suffer for one's art, and if the shoes are terribly fashionable, you should be prepared to put up with a little pain.
A – units of alcohol consumed. If you're planning on drinking, be careful to give yourself a little leeway for reduced coordination.
So using this formula, if Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw, who is an experienced high-heel wearer (let's guess at 5 years experience) wears her latest drop-dead gorgeous designer originals when sober, she can cope with a heel height of a staggering 12.5 centimetres (just over 5 inches) [See footnote 2]. However, if she over-indulges in cocktails, the 'safe' heel height (and perhaps also Carrie) plummets. Using the same example as above, if she consumes 6 units of alcohol she would be better advised to stick to shoes with only 2cm heels. [See footnote 3].
Laura Grant, a physicist from Liverpool University welcomes the Institute's new formula commenting, "many of my physicist colleagues have no trouble understanding quantum mechanics but can't figure out how women can wear high heels. Now I can explain to them how I minimise the probability of tripping up".
Footnotes:
1 Pythagoras' theorem: In a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse (longest side) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.
2 In this example, shoe size (s) is 6 p = 1, y = 5, L = £300, t = 0, A = 0 giving a Q factor of 0.88
so heel height is 12.54 cm
3 As above but with A (alcohol) = 6, Q factor falls to 0.15, giving a heel height of 2.01cm
