Prom Dresses

Quick fact– “stiletto” is the Italian word for a small, slender dagger.

Fashion can be fierce. As the history of high heels proves. Open your textbook to page…well, just keep reading for some fun facts on your favorite pumps.

Heels have a heated history. Today’s tantalizing shoe has been used to cripple women, worn by men, signify class and point out prostitutes over the centuries. Let’s start at the beginning. Around 3500 B.C., Ancient Egyptian butchers wore raised shoes to keep from wading in blood. Yum. During the Renaissance, actors wore different height heels to show age and sex of their characters. The Middle Ages brought pattens, or wooden soles, to keep people from walking in mud. Purely practical reasons. All worn by women and men.

Finally, in the 1400’s, Turkey designed the chopine, the original platform specifically  worn by women. Sometimes 30  inches high, this funky-looking shoe required women to use canes. Tourists thought the odd accessory was quirky and some speculated that, like the Chinese lotus shoe that crippled women’s feet, the chopine was meant to keep wives and daughters from running away or hooking up with other men. But, they were a sign of social status. The original meaning of “beauty is pain.”The Turkish chopine–the original platform

The crippling Chinese lotus shoe

Beyond foot-binding and prostitutes, people wore heeled shoes to keep from slipping out of stirrups while horse-riding. in the mid-1500’s, Catherine de Medici made the high heel more fashionable than functional by insisting on a higher, thinner heel. She wanted to dazzle her fiance and outshine his slightly taller mistress. Understandable considering she soon would be Queen of the French Court.

Catherine de Medici’s fashionable  heel.

That puts us up to the 1600’s–Oops! There’s the bell. More on high heel history next class!