Men in Heels

Men in heels cause arguments today: some see a bold gesture and a play with gender stereotypes, others a challenge to tradition. But look into history and it turns out that tradition is on the side of the heel. The heel appeared as men’s footwear, for riding and war, and in the seventeenth century became a symbol of power and aristocracy. The most famous heels in history belong not to some fashionable woman but to Louis XIV, King of France. Researchers of shoe history, such as Elizabeth Semmelhack, curator of Canada’s Bata Shoe Museum, have traced this path in detail. The story of the heel is a fine example of how the “masculine” and the “feminine” in fashion swap places.

A Heel for the Stirrup

The heel is an invention of riders. For horsemen, especially in Persia, where cavalry was the backbone of the army, it helped keep the foot in the stirrup when a warrior rose to shoot an arrow. At the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Persian embassies visited Europe, and interest in everything Persian gripped the aristocracy. European men began wearing shoes with heels as a sign of manliness and a link with the cavalry. Gradually the heel lost its practical meaning and became fashionable: in a city, where there is no need to stay in a stirrup, it showed that its wearer did not trudge through mud or do physical labour.

From horseman to courtier

Louis XIV turned the heel into an instrument of politics. The king, by accounts, was short and fond of high heels, and red heels and soles became at his court a sign of belonging to the highest nobility. Only those admitted to court could wear them. In the famous state portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud of 1701 the king poses in white stockings and shoes with red heels, and those legs, in a ballet position, look like part of royal grandeur. The red heel became a status symbol long before the red sole became the recognisable sign of a modern shoe brand.

The Heel: From Cavalry to Catwalk

Originally: shoes of Persian horsemen, for the stirrup
Around 1600: the fashion for heels reaches Europe
Seventeenth century: red heels, a sign of nobility under Louis XIV
Eighteenth century: men gradually give up heels
1960s: men’s boots on a Cuban heel

How Men Gave Up the Heel

In the eighteenth century fashion began to separate the masculine from the feminine ever more strictly. The Enlightenment prized reason and practicality, and men’s clothing gradually became simpler and more restrained. The heel, increasingly associated with women’s fashion, irrationality and luxury, was gradually abandoned by men. By the end of the century, after the French Revolution, aristocratic symbols became dangerous altogether. Historians call this period the “Great Male Renunciation”: men gave up bright colours, lace, jewellery and heels, leaving all of it to women. For two hundred years the heel became a symbol of femininity.

But the men’s heel could not disappear entirely. It stayed in riders’ boots and in cowboy footwear, where it kept its original function. In the 1960s British musicians wore Chelsea boots with Cuban heels, in the 1970s glam rockers took the stage on enormous platforms. In recent years men’s boots with heels and even shoes have appeared again in collections and on red carpets. Each time it is taken as a provocation, though from a historical point of view it is rather a return to the roots.

The heel was first masculine, then aristocratic, then feminine, and now once again belongs to no one.

The Heel Without Gender

Today fashion increasingly refuses to divide things into men’s and women’s. The heel has become a symbol of this freedom: if a king could wear red heels to underline his power, why can’t a modern man wear them to underline his individuality? The history of shoes shows that rules that seem eternal are in fact very young. Two hundred years of the “feminine” heel are only a short episode against its long history. Perhaps in a few decades a conversation about men’s heels will seem as strange as a conversation about women’s trousers once did.

The heel in history

The next time you see a man in heels, remember the Persian horseman, Louis XIV in Rigaud’s portrait and the musicians of the 1960s. The heel has travelled from weapon to status symbol and back to freedom of self-expression. Fashion loves such stories: a thing that seemed unambiguous turns out to be a complex cultural symbol. And perhaps the main lesson of the history of the heel is not to hurry to declare something “wrong.” It may well be simply a well-forgotten past.