Take Me Back Tuesday: Men Wore High Heels First?!

Take Me Back Tuesday: Men Wore High Heels First?!

Did you know that men started wearing heals way before women?

The first people to wear high heels are believed to have been Persian horseback warriors sometime around the 9^th century. Heels were reportedly developed specifically for riding, to keep the rider’s foot from slipping out of the stirrups. It also helped to hold the rider steady when standing up in the stirrups and shooting arrows.

A group of Persian diplomats visited Europe in 1599 to recruit allies to help Persia defeat the Ottoman Empire. Persian culture was developed as a result and Persian high heeled shoes style was adopted by Western European aristocrats.

The shoes became a status symbol and the heels were extended to make the men look even taller. (This is believed to be where the term “well heeled”, meaning “wealthy” originally came from.)

Louis XIV of France was a powerful leader but his height wasn’t so encouraging at five feet, four inches tall (1.62 m), which was slightly below average in his day. (The average height for men in France at the time, in modern international units, was 5 ft. 5 inches or 1.65 m.  Note: Contrary to popular belief.)

A king being shorter than average wasn’t ideal for his ego, so Louis took measures to make himself look taller, sporting four inch heels, often decorated with elaborate battle scenes. Eventually, he switched to having red heels on all his shoes and decreed that only the upper echelons of society could have matching red heels. Just looking at the colour of a man’s heels would tell if he was in the king’s inner circle.

Women of the 1600s started wearing heels as a way of showing their equality. Elizabeth Semmelhack, curator of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto and author of “Heights of Fashion, a History of the Elevated Shoe”, says the rage of that period in parts of Europe was for women to dress and act like a man. (It should be noted, though, that at the time men’s outfits by today’s standards were extremely effeminate.)

"You had women cutting their hair, adding epaulettes to their outfits. They would smoke pipes; they would wear hats that were very masculine. And this is why women adopted the heel — it was in an effort to masculinise their outfits".

It soon became a fashion for everyone, the lower classes started to wear high heels. The elite responded by making their heels increasingly higher to maintain the distinction of being upper class- the higher the heel, the more expensive the shoe typically was. They also began to differentiate heels into two kinds- fat heels for men and skinny for women.

Soon enough, men dropped the heel almost completely to show their distinction from women. Since the late 18th century, men’s shoes have had primarily low heels, except for cowboy boots and some shoes worn by rock stars, who occasionally have a propensity to wear effeminate garb similar to before the “Great Male Renunciation”.

Women also drifted away from the heel as cobblestone style streets were nearly impossible to walk on with the heels. The heel came back into fashion in the mid-19th century with the advent of photography, pornographers seem to always be among the first to take advantage of new styles and technology. They were among the first to embrace photography and as for the high heels, they often dressed models for risqué post cards and other photographs.

Since then, high heels have come in and out of fashion repeatedly, except for in the porn trade, where they’re seemingly a constant. Lower heels were preferred during the late 1960s and early 70s. In the 1980s and 90s, high heels made a popular comeback. Various styles of heels have taken their turn on the runways as well, such as the block heel of the 70s, the mule and the famous stiletto that’s been popular in the 50s, 80s, and today.

source: Today I Found Out

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