History of the heel....

"I don't know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot!"

~Marilyn Monroe 

Do you know how high heels first came to be? Well??  Many may not, so I decided to take the time and do a little research on one of the best inventions ever!!

The origin of the high heel goes back many centuries in history. The first precursors of stiletto heels were discovered in a tomb of Tebas in Old Egypt, and date from 1000 BC. These heels possibly provided a high social status to those who wore them.

In 3500 B.C., heels were wore as a ceremonial accessory for Egyptian butchers who wore them to walk above the blood of slaughtered animals is now what world-class designer Christian Louboutin describes as “A mirror of what you want, what you are, or what you’re missing”.  

The formal invention of high heels as fashion did not occur as a result of an off-the-charts-beautiful trendsetter trying to be different.  Instead, an insecure fourteen-year-old with an impending marriage to the Duke of Orleans (who would later become the King of France, Henry II) had a pair of two-inch heels made in a desperate attempt to shine before the‘splendid' French Court, and measure up to her fiancé’s notably taller, more beautiful mistress.  Just shy of five feet tall, Catherine de Medici (1519-1589)replaced her clunky wooden soles with heels that were meticulously designed by a brilliant Florentine Artisan and handcrafted by her personal Cobbler.  When people noticed her newly attained towering physique and alluring sway when she walked, the trend spread like wildfire across the entire French nation.  As a result, Catherine de Medici is now considered the mother of the modern high heel. 

High heels soon became a symbol of wealth and authority and before long; men were wearing them as often as women.  Preceding rulers such as Mary Tudor, or “Bloody Mary”, and King Louis XIV were famous for their obsession with the style; King Louis XIV was said to wear heels as high at five inches tall.  In addition, he declared across the nation that only royalty could wear heels with soles colored red, and all people were banned from wearing heels taller than his own.  In this instance, King LouisXIV became an advocate for using fashion as a symbol of greatness.  It became a means to communicate class in society.

In the New World, however, the trend was not so popular among the recently colonized Puritans.  In fact, the Massachusetts Colony even passed a law that banned women from wearing high heels to seduce a man or they would be tried as a witch.  Around the 1790’s, during the time of the French Revolution, European views about high heels began to change as well.  Napoleon saw high heels as a cultural barrier that discouraged equality, and as a result banished them across the nations.  It wasn’t for another seventy years that heels became high fashion in Europe once again.  This came as a result of a new invention—the sewing machine, which allowed for greater variety and faster production of shoes.  Still, the Puritans remained steadfast against what they deemed to be a ‘sexually aggressive gait’, compared to a ‘poisoned hook’ to catch a naive male.  In 1888 America opened up their first heel factory and began what would escalate into a revolution of shoe-crazed women in demand for rapid production of the French-imitated high heel.  

Wow, who would have ever thought... 

I found a couple of pictures of the first heels every invented and let me just say, I'm so happy that the times have changed...