A number of you, dear listeners, have asked if I would ever do a story about high-heeled shoes. And I've always demurred because the thing is, I actually already did a story about high-heeled shoes. It's just that I did it 12 years ago. Back when I was 23 years old and I sounded like this. Heels affect the way you move through the world. Maybe I don't sound different. I feel like I sound really different. But this was actually the first fashion story I ever made. It was back when I was working at the Incredible Architecture and Design podcast, 99% Invisible. And this was the first time that I was like, what if we considered clothing design? But the interesting thing is, when I made this, it was 2014. And that happened to be a very particular time in shoe fashion. Because at the time, in 2014, high heels were really, really tall. They were like six or seven inches tall. And not that high heels that tall don't exist anymore. Obviously, they still exist. But these days, when I see heels around, they tend to be a low, thick block heel. So it was really funny listening back to this montage I made of people hacking their shoes to try to make them more comfortable. Like, listen to this. This feels really dated to me. YouTube is full of hacks and tips and tricks. Put the heel liner in and it will prevent your shoe from like, flopping off. MacGyver type fixes for the shoe. All you need is felt and a glue stick and a glue gun. Remember, guys, do not burn yourself. Like, are people still doing that? Are people still MacGyvering their heels? This felt very 2014. High heels were in fashion at that time. But are they the leading shoe trend? Not at the moment. I popped over to the Fashion Institute of Technology to talk to Colleen Hill. I am senior curator of costume at the Museum at FIT. I started thinking about high heels in about 2012, but it really was this moment in time when extreme heels were the shoe going down the runway. Really extreme heels. They were absolutely the leading shoe trend. So when there are these like massive sculptural heels that are stomping down the runway, does it actually make its way out into the street? Like, were you seeing people wearing these around? I was, believe it or not. And I was wearing some of them too, but obviously I was much younger at the time. All day? You wore them all day? Yeah, I would wear them all day. So why did high heels used to be so tall? This trend, this trend for really high shoes that started around maybe 2010, was first viewed as an alternative to the IT bag. This early 21st century, really late 90s, IT bag phenomenon. In the 90s, giant corporate groups like LVMH and Caring were buying up fashion houses, and they were encouraging designers to send handbags down the runway to try to sell more accessories. And LVMH is a huge part of that. LVMH had shareholders to please, and the markup on bags is really high, but consumers are willing to spend on it. When it comes to handbags, you can get a lot of wear out of them. Bags also don't require sizing, which is much easier for both the manufacturer and the buyer. Anyone can fit into a handbag. Bags became massive money makers. They became these objects of mass obsession. But as more and more fashion houses came out with a rotation of bags, it became harder to stand out from the pack. Designers were thinking about what came next, and designers were seeing these high-end shoes as a way to make these almost sculptures for your feet. I mean, they were really extreme both in height, but also lots of color, lots of embellishment, and they were really eye-catching. That was really in contrast to what people were seeing as much less interesting clothing on the runway at the time. During gray, sleek 90s minimalism, shoes gave a little permission to play, and then came Carrie Bradshaw. I think sex in the city cannot be underestimated in its influence. It's part of where people got the idea that you could wear high, high heels all day long, not fathoming that Sarah Jessica Parker or Cynthia Nixon could remove their shoes between takes. That's where we start to really know shoe brands and designers. I think really prompted in part by sex in the city. But as we get into the 21st century and the idea of fashionable shoes, I think when this becomes more of a thing, there's really this kind of amping up of who's doing great shoes and where they're sold and who's doing the best new thing. And a lot of shoe departments, particularly here in New York, were expanding. In 2007, Sacks announced their shoe department was big enough to warrant its own zip code. 10022 shoe. In 2008, Barney's and Macy's also announced their devoted shoe departments. That says a lot about how shoes were becoming much more important in the fashion market. And this gets to where I was when I made that episode about high heels for 99% invisible. And when I listened to this old episode, it really was a missive from another time. When fashions change, it's symptomatic of larger societal shifts. Fashion changes are these mass movements dictated by millions of individual realities. And I love nothing more than looking at a recent trend with the benefit of hindsight. Why did high heels used to be so towering? And what changed? What made them lower and squatter? So I'm going to play that old episode I made, it's short, and then we're going to pick it apart a little bit and talk about what's happened since. After the break. With over 8 billion people in the world, we all have one thing in common. Every day, we all get dressed. Hello, I'm Cassidy. And I'm April. And together, we are fashion historians, friends, and co-hosts of Dressed, The History of Fashion, a podcast about why the clothes we wear matter throughout history and around the world. From the cultural and societal to the personal and often political with each episode, we explore the multitude of meanings quite literally sewn into the clothes we wear. And we meet the mini makers behind the scenes, well and less are known responsible for their creation. Please join us in unraveling the hidden histories residing in your closet for our new season launching May 6th with more than 575 episodes in our back catalog. Our ninth season promises to be our best yet. New episodes are available on Wednesdays on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you listen to your favorite shows. This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. If you hear these footsteps, you can get some idea about who is walking towards you. She could be a supermodel, a CEO, a drag queen, a bridesmaid, just to name a few. As a fashion object and symbol, the high heel is weighted with meaning. It is also weighted with the wearer's entire body weight. The high-heeled shoe might be one of the only designs that is physically painful and yet somehow persists. Avery Truffleman doesn't tend to wear heels. I really like the way heels look and I've tried wearing them, but I just cannot do it. So I talk to someone who actually wears them every day. And I have a standing desk, so I'm even a bigger dummy, right? Like, I'm in these heels all day and standing. And when Adi does her job, you can't even tell she's doing it in heels. This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Adi Kornish. Believe it or not, we radio folk actually bother to get dressed. Sometimes. For Adi Kornish, like a lot of professionals, high heels are strictly for the office. Commuting to work, it's flats. After work, back-in flats. Because it is impossible, I feel like, to find a shoe that is a high heel that's really gorgeous and fundamentally comfortable. She's tried high heels that claim to use comfort technology. But it's like a three-and-a-half inch, four-inch pump. Like, it's only gonna be so comfortable. There are shoes that are wearable, and I can wear them for hours. But I wouldn't call it comfortable. Right? It's just possible. And she does not like to complain. You do it to yourself, right? So it's dumb to walk around being like, these heels hurt, because that's basically like saying, I failed at this look. But people have been failing at this look for a very long time. I can't tell when the heel was actually invented. I think that history is long-buried and dates back centuries and centuries and centuries in the Near East. Elizabeth Semelhack curates a very specialized museum in Toronto. I'm Elizabeth Semelhack, and I'm the senior curator at the Badashi Museum. I've gotta ask, why isn't it the museum? I don't know. You were the first to ask me that question. The collection at the Badashi Museum, or Shuseum, includes a lot of different kinds of footwear, but high heels are the focus of Elizabeth Semelhack's research, and the subject of her book, Heights of Fashion, a history of the elevated shoe. And that history, as it turns out, started with men. Many horseback riding cultures wore heels on their boots and on their shoes for riding. Heels help you stay in the stirrups, which is why cowboy boots have heels. As early as the 10th century, the Persian cavalry was wearing inch-high, high heels. And Persia had a really big, really talented, mounted military, so this spread the trend. And so European men have heels added to their riding boots. It's associated with upper-class practice, because having horses, keeping horses, you know, it's like having a sports car. And so it seems that from there, men wore it first, within short order, upper-class women added heels to their own outfits, and then heels become a form of upper and middle-class dress throughout the 17th century. But it really wasn't yet a strong signifier of gender. In all those paintings of Louis XIV and his little kitten heels, he's dressing like the pillar of normative aristocratic masculinity he is. There's nothing effeminate about him at the time. But then heels started to get gendered in their designs. Men's heels grew broad and sturdy, and women's became tapered and decorative. Finally, men deemed them impractical, and in the 18th century, the high heel is strictly a lady shoe. And something really interesting happens at the end of the 18th century, which is the French Revolution. And when the French Revolution happens, high heels, although they were very much associated with femininity, they were also very much associated with aristocratic femininity. Post-French Revolution, aristocracy and frivolity are out of vogue. And then heels stay out of style for a really, really long time, until, and this is Semelhack's theory, the invention of the camera. Because with photography came pornography, and with the rise of pornography came the rise of the heel. Pornography embraced high, thin heels before fashion did, because heels work great when you don't have to move and you're just posing for a few minutes. It's around this time when heels become sex-charged. The pin-ups that are in men's barracks during World War II almost always have high heels on them. When the war is over and the men return home, that is when the stiletto is invented, because the stiletto brings fashion into alignment with men's erotica. As heels made their way out of photography and onto the street and into the office, there arose the engineering challenge of trying to make this fundamentally uncomfortable thing comfortable. I think the physics of putting the weight of a woman's body basically on the balls of her feet is, you know, that's a lot of pressure to try to mitigate. So people try to find ways around the design. There are foldable flat shoes that you can take with you and you just can't take the pain of a high heel anymore. But if you want to go the whole nine yards, or nine hours, in pumps, YouTube is full of hacks and tips and tricks. Put the heel liner in and it will prevent your shoe from like flopping off, you know what I mean? MacGyver type fixes for the shoe. All you need is a felt and a glue stick and some glue and some scissors and a glue gun. Remember guys, do not burn yourself. MacGyver type fixes for the foot. All you have to do is take together your third and your fourth toe. I promise this work. Classes and tutorials for learning how to walk in heels. Practice, practice, practice. And I don't want you girls to be afraid about going up and down the stairs in heels. It's actually fairly easy. In the most extreme cases, people have gotten surgeries to shorten their pinky toes, dead in their nerves, or shoot Botox into their feet, all to circumvent the pain of the high heel. You start to feel it at the very bottom of your foot. The ball of your foot has all the nerves. And then it'll start to rub on your heels and rub on the sides. And then suddenly you step down and it's going to be a shooting, stabbing pain. And after that pain, you'll go numb. Meet the twins. I'm Emily Liang. I'm three minutes older. I'm Jessica Liang. We have a vintage inspired modern comfort wedding shoe line. So that people who are getting married don't have numb feet, or aching legs, or crooked posture, or nerve damage. Because it's not just your foot pain, it's your ankle pain, it shortens your calves, it ruins your posture. Not to mention bunions and hammer toe and Haglund's deformity. Google these if you want to, but do not click image search. Some things you just can't unsee. The Liang twins designed hacks into the shoe and borrowed elements from other kinds of footwear. When we actually first started, we Frankenstein the most comfortable aspects of different shoes. They started with the toe box, which is basically the very front of the shoe where the toes are. They took the toe box from a salsa dancer's high heel, which tends to be roomier. Just to give your foot enough room to be able to swell as you're standing, every foot will swell throughout the day. The whole shoe is really padded and cushioned, and like running shoes, they have arch support built right in. They're not stilettos. For balance purposes, the Liang's made the heel thick where it meets the foot. But for aesthetics, the sturdy heel tapers to a finer point where it meets the floor. You don't want to look at this shoe and think it's a comfort shoe. Although comfort shoe is relative. We guarantee our shoes are going to be at least an hour more comfortable than all your other shoes. For the Liang twins, even the most comfortable high heels still have a time limit. But Martha Davis begs to differ. I don't have that same feeling. I wear these shoes 12 hours a day, every day, and I know quite a few women who do the same, and I have never had any problems with them. Although Martha Davis is talking about shoes that she made. My name is Martha Davis, and I'm an industrial designer, and I've been working in the footwear industry for the last eight years. You may be familiar with her industrial design work. Martha Davis designed the round, compact case for the pill. Like the Liang twins, Davis was wearing high heels before she started designing them, and she couldn't find a high-heeled shoe that looked good and didn't cause pain. Davis went to Milan to study a process of shoemaking called the lunati method, which emphasizes measurement and proportionality. And her takeaway is this. A heel can be really successful as long as the shoe fits properly. So it's not a question of the height, it's a question of the fit. And there's one critical point where the fit really matters. And it's called the calzata. Calzata? Calzata. They call it the fitting point. That's the number one critical spot. If you look down at your feet, it's kind of right before your foot becomes your toes. So in terms of girth, it's the widest part of your foot. You have to secure that spot and make sure it's not too loose or too tight. The calzata is not the only significant spot. The toe box could be too shallow, and the pitch of the heel could be too steep or not steep enough. There are a number of factors, but it's most important to keep the calzata in proportion to the other numbers for comfort and security. The lunati method allows Martha to play around with sculptural forms and hard materials like steel and gnarled wood with hardly any padding. Though she keeps her shoes relatively low. But a quote-unquote low heel is nothing to scoff at. I wore around three inch heels this week just to try it, and my feet are killing me. So why bother? Ah, well it's complicated. I asked Adi Kornish this question too. The same twinge that makes me feel awkward about discussing high heels is the same thing that makes me think like, Why do I shave my legs? You know what I mean? It's like my whole feminism 101 collegiate self like railing at me from the past being like, You've sold out in every way possible. But there is something to be said for a well-made high heel shoe that kind of makes your calves look amazing and puts that like inappropriate, probably sexy arch in your back. I like that feeling. The heel is so tied up in webs of gender and sex and power. Look, I can't speak for everyone, but when it comes to the appeal of the heel, it's actually not very complex psychology. Heels affect the way you move through the world. They change your walk. They make you push your shoulders back, hold your head up and swing your hips. They make you taller. But it's not really about that. I mean, I'm already pretty tall. Actually in general, height is not as big a factor as you would think. People will often say to me, well, women wear high heels today because they want to be as tall as men. Elizabeth Simohack again. I counter with that and I say, I do understand that reasoning, but there are many, many, many men who would equally benefit from increased height. And so why are they ignoring the potential power of the high heel? But it wasn't too long ago when heels for guys were kind of cool. Think of the opening scene of Saturday Night Fever. John Travolta is walking through the streets of New York and he's strutting around in high heel boots. The camera is focused on his shoes. It puts an undeniable swagger in his step. Men tried high heels in the 70s and why didn't it stick? To condense Elizabeth Simohack's research, men's heels in the 70s were too tied up in subculture. The exoticizing elements kept it on the fringe. And so the men's chunky platform went out of style when power dressing of the 1980s came along. Men were in suits and ties. Women were in suits and heels. And they still are. The high heel could come to mean simply professional power, or it could come to be that female professionals are the new power brokers. But then I would not be surprised if that happens, that men will be as eager to wear high heels as women. It's okay, but only if they can design comfortable ones. Cute, right? It's funny to listen back to, especially because so much has changed in the last dozen years. Like for everybody in the world in profound ways, including, of course, Audie Cornish. So do you remember when we talked about high heels? I did, but I did not remember the details of the discussion. So I actually went back and listened to the episode and I was definitely like, do I still wear heels? After the break. I still think I see people gravitating towards a heel when the situation calls for it. They just may wear a lower heel. I still wear them even though, even on air, on TV now. And when you say you do TV, where do you do TV? What do you want to wear? Oh, sorry. Yes, I am now, my name is Audie Cornish. I am anchor of CNN This Morning, Morning News Show, weekdays at 6am Eastern. And soon to be video podcast with my old friend, Ari Shapiro, it's going to be called Engagement Party. I'm so excited. That's going to be great. I'm excited too. So, well, it's interesting that you still had to sit for a second and be like, wait, do I wear heels? Like it wasn't an immediate knee jerk answer. I mean, how do you think your attitude has changed in the ensuing years? I think the difference is, you know, I'm very much about the costume does affect who you are in the moment and in the world, right? Maybe 10 or 15 years ago when I was covering Congress, I actually wore heels in the hallways of Congress to cover lawmakers. It really felt like you had to look a certain way. Then when I went to NPR, I think I still did it because I was trying to be an anchor and I still felt like a little baby reporter. And I was trying to compensate for the fact that I felt not ready for the job that I was in. Now I'm coming into this job and to TV. I don't feel like that. I don't feel like an ingenue. Like I'm coming pretty fully formed. I'm definitely playing with height more, you know, like before I'd be like, kid and heal who like, why would you do that? And like now I do mix it up with heights. I really do think in terms of message. It's like, who am I talking to? What are their expectations? Certain kinds of heels, they're overkill. And for you, I am wearing my slippers. I'm wearing my like office flat shoe because I know that you want to have a comfortable conversation. You have a very sort of soothing, calm, like rich voice. And like, it feels like we're in a private conversation with that voice that you have. And so like, I'm trying to get myself there, right? And then when it's time to be on, especially on TV where I think there's a little bit of like, I'll just call it cable news drag. There's sort of like an overly sort of feminized look that you sort of put on. Like you're sort of dressing like a butterfly, even though you are delivering not amazing news. You know what I mean? You're usually delivering something that's like kind of grim. And I think that to get into that headspace, things like heels are helpful. Oh, it's just so interesting to hear that this change in your heel wearing comes from all these changes in your life from being in multiple mediums and changing to meet the circumstance. From chasing kids. From chasing kids. It's just, it's very interesting. It feels like a perfect case study and like this is life intersecting with fashion and it happens to be in line with this larger trend. Yeah. Already by maybe 2015, we start to see a shift to lower heels things that are a little bit more manageable. Colleen Hill of FIT again. And I think in general, fashion is always a pendulum. So with those six or seven inch platform heels, I was talking about that's pretty much the most extreme you can go. And so then designers start to think about what else they can do. And of course, the world has changed a lot. That's another thing since we last talked. I feel like pandemic happens and people got used to their zoom fashion. Yeah, I'm barefoot. People got used to doing comfortable shoes or barefoot. Yeah. And that's great. And the other thing is I do feel like the emphasis on comfort, it almost strikes me as a reflection of the tech industry, which is so built around like eliminating pain points, you know, that everything is supposed to be accommodating, sweat wicking full of pockets. Like our clothes are so supplicant to our needs. Now, I cannot imagine anyone will go back to it. Stiletto ever again. It does seem unlikely that that will be every day wear and also on a darker note. I have a friend who won't wear shoes she cannot run in and it's really unfortunate, but it actually is a good thing to think about. The other day when I was at the White House Correspondents Dinner and there was an attempted shooting and I was crouched at a table in my gold strap sandal that was a four inch heel. I rethought some things. I was like, I can't run for my life in this situation. So that was a clarifying moment for sure where I like berated myself when I got home because I thought like, oh, who did you think you were wearing those heels? Like why did you think you were so safe? That was stupid. I mean, do you think this will actually impact your fashion choices going forward? Oh, yeah. Do you have to run? But I mean, isn't that living in America? Your brain now has to do all of these gymnastics to compensate for how we are being asked to live and what we are being asked to accept as in inevitable, quote unquote, way of life. And I do think that makes you think differently. Well, it's just so interesting to think about these heels, these like painful uncomfortable precarious shoes as like nostalgia for a safer time. Well, can I ask you a question before you let me go? Oh, sure. Do you wear heels at all? No. Or is this just a, what's a scenario where you'd consider it? I'm getting married. I'm going to wear heels for my wedding. See, that could have been a time that you wore a very cool white sneaker. I could. But you're not. I'm not. Why? Ah. It just feels like the thing to do. Very traditional wedding and I'm like wearing white. I'm doing the thing. It's the costume. Like, I gotta, I'm gotta commit to the bit. Gotta be the bride to Avery. You're here asking me all these questions and here you are making the exact same choice. You're committing to the bit. You're like, this is the performance. This is the venue. And not only do other people expect it, but I expect it of myself. Yeah. No, that's a, that's a, okay. It's a real body. It's really, it's really true. And I mean, that's part of why I wanted to revisit this is I was like, why am I, why did I get heels for this? Why am I wearing heels? It's in a backyard. It doesn't make sense. I'm just going to be aerating the lawn, you know, you're going to have to get those little plastic things that go on the heels so they don't sink into the lawn. What? That's a product? Yes. Google that's a product. It's a tiny flat disc and it gives the heel this little invisible flat surface for the grass. Okay. I guess people are stoma givering their heels after all. Huge thanks to Roman Mars and the whole team at 99% invisible for, you know, giving me my start in radio and basically raising me. I can't believe that story is 12 years old. Thanks also to Colleen Hill and Audie Cornish. Again, Audie's upcoming video podcast is called engagement party. I'm amped for it. And with that, I'm going to go off and get married now. It's happening this week. I'll have a new episode for you next month. To stay on top of when new episodes come out and to see additional images and links, go to articlesofinterest.substack.com.
