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In Defense of the High-Heeled Shoe
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10366 |
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Section : |
Life
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1986 |
1,271 Words |
| Author
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Rachael Sheli
Rachael Sheli is a freelance writer living in New York City
who covers the fashion field. |
Very few, if any, of those feminine penchants considered frivolous and unnecessary have as venerable a history as high-heeled shoes. Against an ever-recurring outcry denouncing the practice of wearing high heels is ranged a record of doing so that some cultural historians say goes back two thousand years. At the very least, the high heel is as old as the High Renaissance.
Like many other of the achievements of that watershed, the creation of the high-heeled shoe is most frequently ascribed to the Italians, more particularly, the Venetians. While that city-state, the Jewel of the Adriatic, flourished, much of its wealth came from the trading pursued by the swift, far-roaming sailing ships of the republic. The return of those ships was among the major events in the life of the city; high heels were invented, according to one theory, by some enterprising wives who wanted to catch the first glimpse of incoming ships, to ascertain if they were their husbands' vessels. The heels allowed them to see above the milling throngs who invariably gathered at the harbor as soon as a ship was sighted.
It sounds plausible enough, but the real story (or stories) has never been truly authenticated. Some say the style is far older than that; others, that the time frame is right but the origin was Spain. When high heels appeared in Elizabethan England, it was considered a Spanish style. Whatever the truth behind the mythology, it has been a fashion in footwear for a long, long time.
What outcries, if any, might have announced the original rise of the high heel we don't know, but a cataloging of its offenses against human anatomy is a common feature of our
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