You're Dead to Me - The History of High Heels

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

High heels have been around since as early as the 10th century. Today we see them as a cornerstone of footwear fashion, with models strutting their stuff on the catwalk in heels of varying colours and styles. But how has this impractical, even masochistic piece of design become so gender-specific and has it always been this way? Greg Jenner discusses the history of high-heeled shoes with Dr Elizabeth Semmelhack from the Bata Shoe Museum and with returning comedian Lauren Pattison.See photos of the shoes discussed: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09w4wgl/Produced by Cornelius Mendez Script by Emma Nagouse, Harry Prance and Greg Jenner Research by Harry Prance

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. Hello, Greg here. Just to say, we are showing our comedian Lauren Patterson some lovely photos of shoes from history from various museum collections. Her descriptions are great, of course, but if you want to see them for yourself, go to the BBC You're Dead to Me website and look for the History of High Heels page. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to Your Dead to Me, a BBC Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster, and I'm the chief nerd on the funny kids show Horrible Histories. Today we are strapping on

our stilettos and strutting our stuff as we explore the history of the high-heeled shoe. Yes, it's a fashion episode and to do that I'm joined by two very special guests. In History Corner, she's director and senior curator of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, a museum dedicated to researching the history and cultural significance of footwear. She's an expert in the intersections of fashion, economics and gender and has written loads of books and articles, including Heights of Fashion, A History of the Elevated Shoe. It's Dr Elizabeth Semelhak. Hello, Elizabeth. So thrilled to have you here. I'm thrilled to be here too. Thanks. And in Comedy Corner, she's an award-winning comedian. She was Best Newcomer Nominee at the

Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017. You may have seen her hilarious stand-up shows or caught her on the telly on Stand Up for Live Comedy, Roast Battle and Drunk History. You may have seen her hilarious stand-up shows or caught her on the telly on Stand Up for Live Comedy, Roast Battle and Drunk History. You may have heard her on the podcast Conversations Against Living Miserably. But most importantly, you'll have heard her on this podcast with the Mary Shelley episode. It's the marvellous Lauren Patterson. Welcome back, Lauren. Hello. Hello. Nice to see you again. Lauren, last time out, you told us that history for you at school was basically the war um so i don't know where you stand on the history of shoes did you do shoe history at school i'm guessing not i can't see it ever came up no disappointing the curriculum is letting

us all down and where do you stand or rather how do you stand in high heels are you a fan of the high heel do you wear them i'm a Newcastle girl. If I can't walk in a pair of heels, then I'm out of here. They will strip me of my northern pride. So, what do you know? We begin, as ever, with the So What Do You Know? This is where I guess what listeners at home might know about today's subject. Well, high heels. You know what they are, don't you?

A staple of any fashionista's wardrobe. But what comes to your mind when you think of the high-heeled shoe? Perhaps you're picturing super slinky models on the runway wearing Louboutins. Or maybe you're thinking Sex and the City and Carrie Bradshaw pining over a pink Manolo Blahnik pair in a shop window. Hello lover, I think is the line. Maybe you're thinking kinky boots or Ginger Spice and her Union Jack platforms or Ariana Grande and her thigh high boots. But let's be honest, high heels are pretty ordinary, right? Most people either own a pair or live with someone who owns a pair. So it's not like they're rare. So how has that happened? And how did this impractical, some might say masochistic,

bit of footwear become so gendered? Well, let's find out, shall we? Lauren, before we begin, where do you reckon the history of the high heel shoe begins? Oh, I'm thinking whatever era like corsets came in. You know, like corsets and the big like hoop dresses right so sort of farthingale dresses so you're thinking kind of Tudor era yeah the high-heeled Tudors that's the I think we can probably go a little earlier than that probably Elizabeth can't we we can go back at least as far as 10th century Persia where I found evidence of heeled footwear

being worn for horseback riding. I think it was connected to the invention of the syrup. And I wouldn't be surprised if it actually dates even further back. So hang on a minute. What you're saying here is that high heel shoes begin as butch manly warrior wear, right? This is soldiers. They're wearing them in the saddle. These are cavalry troops in medieval Persia, a thousand years ago, maybe more.

And they actually transformed warfare. They allowed men to stabilize themselves and saddle and carry heavier weaponry and shoot with greater accuracy. See, I would go for my Doc Martens. Sturdy, can run on them, good for kicking. If things get a bit too mental, just take them off and chuck one because they're quite heavy. I think I'd go with running spikes so I could head the other direction as fast as possible. Medieval Persian cavalry boots is a slightly surprising start to the history of high heel shoes, perhaps. Over the next five, six centuries, they percolate around Persia, but also come into

other parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, perhaps. Lauren quite, I think, smartly guessed that the Tudors is where we might start the story. So the late 1500s, early 1600s for us. And I've heard that Queen Elizabeth I is the first woman to own these high heel shoes. Is that a dodgy internet myth told to me by some random person who knows nothing? What's the truth? I think what's challenging about that story is language. So we use the word heel and we know exactly what that means. But when the heel was just entering into Western culture, the word heel was actually used for other things as well. So there is a request for her and I have the quote right here, one pair of Spanish leather shoes with high heels and arches that dates to 1595.

But I think that what's actually being asked for here is maybe a pair of Chopins. But the other thing too, is that she also was basically a man in terms of her ability to rule and her unique position. So if it turns out that she ordered a pair of high heels early on, I think it still is in keeping with these ideas of masculinity and equestrian purpose. And the reason we think high heels come into Europe is it's all to do with diplomatic politics. We get someone called Shah Abbas the Great. He's the king of Persia. Elizabeth, this is your research, and this is how the shoe gets seen by European diplomats and comes back into Europe. What happens is that I tried to figure out why at the turn of the 17th century, European men suddenly are interested in heels. And so if you look at what's happening,

England in particular is creating trade relations with Persia as early as the middle of the 16th century. And then Shah Abbas comes to power. He's really interested in connecting with Europeans. In part, he needs help to rise up against the Ottoman Empire, which had sort of stood like this boulder between East and West. And so what he can bring to the table is one of the largest mountain militaries in the world. Very impressive. And they all are wearing high heels. Lauren, do you want to see one of these shoes? Absolutely. There we go. Oh, wow. It's like Kermit the Frog's feet

with a slight heel. That is the best way I can... They're like little green hooves.'re kind of green slippers but with like a a heel it's like your nana who can't wear heels anymore but still wants to like retain that glamour of yes i can still wear heels okay so these heels are mostly for the chaps apart from elizabeth perhaps who maybe is wanting to wear them as a demonstration that she can act like a king. By the 1610s, certainly in Western Europe, we've got heels being depicted in portraits. We're seeing European men wearing these high heels.

And we also know that there's a bit of a functional problem. I mean, it rains quite a lot in Britain, right? I mean, not quite as warm as in Persia. So then you have the issue of mud. Lauren, what happens when a high heel goes into mud? Oh, you live there now. You are stuck like a tent. You have to wait for some scouts to come and unpitch you. Change your postcode, get all your mail redirected. Sorry, I live here now in the swamp with Kermit. This was a technical problem, Elizabeth. And so we get the mule and then the slap sole. Do you want to

explain the two for us? It is hard to visualize, but mules had been around for a long time. They're just like bedroom slippers. They could be worn out of sight. They could be worn at home. And so what men would do is they would slip their high-heeled shoe inside a mule. So they'd tuck the toe of their shoe into the toe of the mule, and then they would pat around. And I think it was really a form of advertisement. Slap, slap, slap, slap, slap. Look, I'm wearing these newfangled high heels. So they become associated with men's high fashion. Women actually also started to wear slap soles as part of the masculinization of their dress. But interestingly, women's slap soles that everyone that I've ever seen survive has a nail going through the bottom of the mule sole into the heel so that women

actually couldn't make the noise. So no slapping for women. So hang on, we call them slap soles, but they didn't make a slap sound. They did when men wore them, just not when women wore them. And in fact, women's slap soles almost wore them just not when women wore them and in fact women's slap soles almost always have um felt on the bottom so that not only are they not slapping they're not even making any noise as they walk lauren let's show you an image of a slap sole these are women's slap soles and you can see the bit of felt at the bottom and they have i've actually had these x-ray and so you can see the nail going up into the heel yeah Yeah, I'm into those. They look fancy. Very like, they're a nice little gold color.

They've got a little bow. Like they would sell today. They would definitely sell today. They're quite practical, but also very dainty. These are basically high heel shoes as you can imagine them, but there is a sort of cushion on the bottom, right? Oh, I hadn't even noticed that. I like that.

See, I need that for like when I can't wear the heels anymore and I need a little lie down then I've got a little cushion ready to go these are made as two separate forms of footwear there's the mule the slipper part and then the plain or high heel it's inserted into the fore part so actually if it wasn't nailed together you could pull the whole shoe out and then you'd simply have a pair of mules that you could be comfortably runaway in. The felt is on the bottom. So what you're saying is there's a shoe in a shoe on top of a cushion. Correct. Okay. Okay.

Exactly. What a clever invention. So that's slap souls, which obviously sounds like a genre of funk music, So that's Slapsoles, which obviously sounds like a genre of funk music, but isn't. So there is also a bit of a backlash, too, in the early 1600s to women wearing what are perceived to be men's shoes. We do have a quote from a Venetian ambassador in 1618 who says, all are wearing men's shoes. And there's a pamphlet called Hick Mouliere, or the man woman being a medicine to cure the cultish disease of staggers and the masculine feminines of our times. And the quote says, these women are swimming in the excess of these vanities and will be man-like, not only from the head to the waist, but to the very foot. So he's very angry. The ladies are wearing men's shoes.

And that is how the high heel enters into the female wardrobe. My question about how the European men become interested in heels then led me to the next question, which is, but the high heels so feminized, when did it become something that women wore? And I was very surprised to find out that really what was happening is that women first began to wear the heel in the efforts to make their outfits look more masculine. And so these mannish women were criticized for things like wearing men's hats and carrying swords and wearing heels. And so it goes against sort of everything we think about when we think about the high heel. But in fact, that is how women began to wear the fashion of

heels. You've mentioned already Chopin, Elizabeth. Chopin is a word that's not going to mean much to our listeners. So I think we probably need to establish, you know, Lauren, have you ever heard of a Chopin? I have not. I thought he was a piano player, but am I thinking Chopin? Yeah, exactly. You're not far off. It's spelled the same apart from an E on the end. I was like, why did she order a pianist? Like, I thought she needed shoes. Chopin, Elizabeth, are quite specific bit of footwear. Again, we've got a lovely photograph that we're going to show Lauren. Oh, wow. That is a GCSE art project. That is the best.

It's like, you know, the shoes, you're not meant to give them to dogs, but those like dog shoes that look like shoes. And they're actually really bad for dogs. But it looks like one of those on a top hat. for dogs um but it looks like one of those on a top hat elizabeth do you want to give us a more technical definition although i do like lauren's version actually so it's a platform shoe this one's italian it is a wooden platform that's covered in red velvet. And footwear like this was worn by women in Italy under women's dresses. You weren't allowed to show your chopines when you walked. You didn't flash them to anybody.

What they were there to do was to increase the amount of textile your dress required. These are platform shoes. Lauren, how high do you reckon they got? I reckon quite high, you know, like a good six seven inches it's 50 centimeters sometimes they could be half a meter high in the most extreme really 54 centimeters so oh wow i don't know how tall you are lauren but if you were to wear 54 centimeter high shoes where are you getting to in terms of your height the moon like i am gonna have to no longer need to climb the shelves in tesco when something's on the top shelf and i can't reach it okay pair of top hat shoes yeah i tend to think of these specifically elizabeth as venetian shoes and these shoes are designed to be hidden. So really what they are is kind of

scaffolding to make you taller. So your dress is longer, which means you're showing off how much dress you've got because having a dress is expensive and the more fabric, the more rich you are. So it's a billboard, right? You're advertising your wealth. Correct. I've likened the women who are dressed by their families in Venice in particular, when they're put on view certain days of the year, they're like parade floats. And the whole point was, especially in Venice in particular, when they're put on view certain days of the year, they're like parade floats. And the whole point was, especially in Venice, because it was a republic and men were expected to dress more similarly to one another, that the only way that families could really show off their wealth through textile wealth, the reason why we use the word invest today, right,

The reason why we use the word invest today, right, is because it's linked to investment, to clothing. Yeah. And to show off all of the wealth that your family has, the best way to do that was through the conspicuous consumption and showing of all of this extra fabric and dress on the dress of women. But this is how it was worn in the Italian peninsula, all the different principalities and city-states. In Spain, it was worn differently. They were actually worn visible because the rest of women's dress was completely concealed. Were women comfortable in these? They're 54 centimetres off the ground.

Do they need friends to help them and servants to topple over? A servant was a part of the parade float look. You were able to put your young bride or your young mother out onto view wearing these incredible costumes. And she had to have support, usually from enslaved people or servants that would help her walk. And she also needed to walk very slowly. I mean, not that she could have run away in a pair of 54 centimeter high Chopines. But the point was that, again, like the parade float image works really well in my mind because she's just slowly walking and being seen. So these are performative shoes. Lauren, 54 centimeter high stilt shoes, Chopines, would you wear these? I think I would definitely wear them to like gigs because then I would never have to worry about not being able to see other people's shoulders again. True.

I think they'd have their uses, definitely. Maybe we're bringing back Chopines then. Okay. Elizabeth, so far we've heard about high-heeled shoes being worn by soldiers, Chopines being worn by wealthy people who are showing off. Does the style get copied by the lower ranks of society? Is there a shoestring budget for high heel shoes?

There is. By the middle of the 17th century, many, many different socioeconomic groups are wearing heeled footwear. But the wealthiest did tend to have the more impractical versions of the shoes. So you see some men's heels getting quite high, and many women's, upper-class women's shoes also get very, very high and very narrow. And that's deliberate, right? The more impractical a shoe, the fancier you are, right? Because you can't go and do some digging in it. Yeah, you see this more in the 18th century. It becomes a signifier of femininity. All women are pretty much obligated to wear some form of high heel just to show they're feminine. But the height of the heel is in many ways linked to whether or not that woman is upper class or not. And we get men carrying on wearing their high heels well into the 18th century. And there's one particularly famous Frenchman who is renowned for his heels.

Lauren, who do you think this might be? Think very, very famous, very, very French. Oh, is it Napoleon? I mean, that's a good guess. Go 150 years earlier. Oh, see, I was thinking because he was short. I was like, he would need heels, wouldn't he? It's Louis XIV, arguably the most powerful man in Europe at the time. He was renowned for his high heels. We've got a portrait here of him. You can see him in full glamorous robes. He's got the furs on, but it's his shoes that are particularly lovely and the way he's turning them towards us so we can see them lauren do you want

to describe them for us quite a short but stout heel they're very like you know like the clocks machine that like you as a school kid would measure your shoes right like the heeled version of that and the most iconic thing is that the heels are bright red and this is the thing that louis is famous for oh my god is this where we get louboutins from ah well that's that's a famous story isn't it so what's going on is that he's actually wearing a fashion that was already an established fashion which was red heels but But he seems that they still haven't found the perfect smoking gun to prove it. But it seems that what he did was he set some sumptuary laws or regulations around allowing only those in France who had been granted access to his court to have the privilege of

wearing red heeled footwear. They have a very political meaning within France. But of course, France didn't have closed borders or anything. And so as people traveled there, they saw this crazy fashion. They bring it with them wherever they go. And when they take the red heel with them, it carries that Frenchness and that French idea of court privilege to places like England. And then it shouldn't be, however, confused with what Louboutin does, because Louboutin never made red heels, but he's famous for red soles. So who knows what Louis XIV

would have thought of that specific use of red in footwear. But the interesting thing, I suppose, is that these heels are, are they stacked heels? What are they made of? They're quite chunky. Sometimes they were made of wood and covered in leather. These are called self-covered leather heels. These are associated with domestic space or ceremonial dress. Stacked leather is when you literally stack leather. You can build it up as high as you want, but that's associated more with manly outdoor activity. So cowboy boots today are stacked leather, as are men's business brogues.

So men to this day still privilege stacked leather over self-covered leather heels, which we associate more with what women wear. So wood covered in leather is more feminine and more masculine would be little strips of leather stacked on top of each other. One of the things that's sort of interesting is that, of course,

Louis becomes a mortal enemy of most other European nations. He's always going to war with them. And so we also get backlashes against French fashion. Heels fall out of favour in 1740s, a bit after Louis' time of fairness. But in the 1740s, Brits are like, well, we're not going to wear them because that's French and we don't like the French. So there's a sort of sense also that this is a foreign shoe. This is specifically for men's dress. So the heel does not fall out of fashion at all for women's attire, but it does begin to fall out of fashion across Europe by the 1740s. And in England in particular, the red

French heel becomes used rhetorically as a way of talking about anti-French sentiment. But it also is linked to Enlightenment ideas that men are rational creatures and their dress needs to be toned down and they shouldn't wear silly things like high heels. And so high heels get left to women as a symbol of what makes them desirable their irrationality so those concepts are pan-european as well so women are silly so they can wear silly shoes but men are sensible and men wear good sensible rational shoes manly shoes and it's interesting to note that the use of the word sensible shoes when applied to women, even to this day, is a way of de-sexing a woman instantly. And then the other problem, of course, is we get the French Revolution and we get the Haitian Revolution and we get the American Revolution.

We get this era at the end of the 1700s where people are rising up against the aristocracy, against the powerful. We're getting new ideas of republicanism and so again the shoe is tied into this right people are rejecting the aristocratic shoe what do you think women in particular were wearing right at the beginning of the 1800s think an ancient shoe oh like a sandal it was yeah yeah absolutely terrible for tan, good for toga parties. So that's the tagline. Yeah, the sandal comes in because everyone's trying to emulate the Romans and Greeks and their Enlightenment values and their Republican values. They didn't have kings.

So the sandal comes in for ladies. And then the heel comes back for men. It's very confusing, Elizabeth. And it's all to do with trousers or pantaloons. Do you want to guess why, Lauren, what trousers got to do with heels? Is it like tripping over the hems, maybe? Not far off. That's a pretty good guess, isn't it, Elizabeth? It is. And so the high heel is abandoned in women's fashion because of associations of female sexual manipulation. Marie Antoinette is the poster child for this, right? female sexual manipulation. Marie Antoinette is the poster child for this, right? That she's using her feminine wiles and she brings down the French government. Men also lose a form of clothing,

which is britches, which stop at the knee. These are also connected to ideas of the aristocracy. So now men have to wear pants of some kind. And so the first pants are pantaloons, which are knit. some kind. And so the first pants are pantaloons, which are knit. And the look is to keep a very, very straight, slim line. And the only way to do that is to have a strap under the hem, and that you slip it under your foot. But if you are walking, and you don't have a little heel to catch that strap, then just slips off the back, the whole look is is lost and so the heel does come back for men but in a very functional way it doesn't keep their foot in the stirrup it keeps the stirrup of their pants straight under their feet when you say pants obviously all the brits listening are thinking underpants so we have to say trousers for the bread so the skinny jean of the early 1800s really

has to loop under the heel lauren. And this is for men again. So once again, men are wearing the heels and women aren't. So here we go back with our second reversal. I will note, it was very, very short-lived and a lot of men got criticised. Women and men are swapping heels left, right and centre. And then we get to the mid-1800s, the Industrial Revolution, and a change in the kind of shoes that can be manufactured in large numbers and the quality of them.

And women are now wearing heels more. So let's see a photo. These are beautiful boots made by a man called Pinay. Yep, Francois Pinay. Oh, they're nice. I like those. You'd see those in Zara today. They are floral. You could dress them up. You could dress them down.

Yeah. We're talking here about a black suede. What's the fabric? It's silk. Silk. Oh, goodness. Wow. Okay. It's a sort of all in one boot. It's got a little bow brocade on the front. It's very floral design. It's very elegant. It tapers in at the ankle and curves out at the heel. These are beautiful shoes, but they're also being produced in larger numbers. And there are other things going on as well in terms of shopping. In the mid 19th century, we're getting a revolution in leisure culture. So, you know, when the heel was abandoned in women's fashion at the end of the 18th century. Heels were out in women's fashion for a full 50 years. And what was in was ideas of women being at home. So the cult of

domesticity kept women indoors. And a lot of them were sick of it by the middle of the century. And they wanted out. Some of them wanted access to the right to vote and other women just wanted to be able to come out and be in public. And so the invention of the department store, these beautiful boulevards where they could be seen and consume and similar to Venice, show off the wealth of their families through the dress that they purchased. they purchased. But more importantly, I think, is the fact that this is very 18th century referencing. And I find it very curious that just as women are rising up and really asking for the right to vote, all of a sudden, that 18th century style, which is remember when women did bad things in government, comes back into fashion, along with the heel. And so I think it's more has more to do with politics than pavement. So it's not just to do with the fact that it's easier to walk in because of cobblestones actually

this is more to do with the culture of the time. We have this nightclub in Newcastle but it was on the quayside which is obviously very cobbled and there was an infamous name for watching the girls walk down the cobbles to the club on a Friday Saturday night and it was the cobble wobble. Every week the club would be like can it was the cobble wobble. Every week the club would be like, can you survive the cobble wobble? I rarely survived the cobble wobble. It's that kind of thing like watching Bambi's mom get shot where you're like, oh no, she's down.

Oh no. So beautiful, but so sad. Another huge innovation in terms of the history of shoes from a slightly sideways angle also happening in the 1840s and 50s is the invention of photography a new technology where you can share images so fashions can be shared more readily and more easily celebrity fashions and so forth you can emulate what the queen's wearing but there's also something else that's happening as well lauren what do you think happens when men particularly horny men get their hands on cameras in the 1850s is it like early day upskirting no we're talking here about

Victorian pornography and the shoe plays an important part doesn't it Elizabeth it really does in European culture there is no dearth of naked ladies like you can go to any museum or street corner and see a statue of a woman naked. What made it so enticing was that you were looking at a contemporary female. And so you needed to have something on her body or where she was that let you know that she wasn't a Venus from mythology, but she was the shop girl down the street. Most other forms of clothing cover the body, but shoes don't. And so shoe fashions were changing so quickly at the time that if you put a naked female in a pair of shoes, you could date her. It helps the image become very voyeuristic.

It's like a timestamp, a literal timestamp. I love the idea of people going, I don't want any historical boobs. I want modern, up-to-date boobs. And the only way I'm going to see them is with shoes that tell me what year those boobs were made. We have to remember that people didn't see women's legs, right? Shoes were the only reminder that a woman had these two legs under those skirts. And so I think what this does is it further eroticizes shoes when contemporary shoes find a place in pornography and i think this is why still today in men's erotica the naked female body is ornamented by a pair of shoes and it's nonsensical because when i take my clothes off my shoes go first

exactly practicality right what do we want practical porn when do we want? Practical porn. When do we want it? Now. I want people struggling to take their socks off. That's what I want to see. The eroticism now of this moment in history. Also, we start to see clashes in what women are meant to be like in society. And shoes, again, are being sucked into that conversation. shoes again are being sucked into that conversation so we get ladies home journal in 1888 declaring that if a woman paints her cheeks dyes her hair draws in her waist and wears two high heels she may not be morally bad but she will be surely mistaken for quite another person than she truly is so the idea that if you're wearing heels and makeup you might well be one of those saucy rude ladies the heel has become a little bit immoral a a bit naughty, a bit licentious, perhaps. I think that the more that it gets associated with erotica, the more naughty it gets, right?

But it's also used as a weapon against women who are members of the female suffrage movement. You can't trust a lady to have the vote if she's wearing heels right lauren absolutely i mean what ideas must she have with her head way up in the clouds literally these are ludicrous ideas to us now but this genuinely is an argument that was made in the new york times right so women who wear heels are evidence that women are irrational and therefore should not be given political suffrage. If that's the argument you're making, I feel like you've already lost the argument. If that's the best reason you can find. But the weird thing, I suppose, Lauren, is that there is one quite iconic example, and Elizabeth's already mentioned it, of a manly heel at this point in history that is practical.

Do you know what it is? Think Western. Is it? Oh, this is annoying me. It's on the tip of my tongue. Cowboy boots. Cowboy boots. I couldn't remember.

I was going to say line dancing shoes, and I was like, that's not specific. The cowboy boot is sensible, functional, practical, manly attire. And yet it's a heel. I guess it goes back to the Persians a thousand years ago and their cavalry. But all the while people are decrying women wearing impractical high heels that are six inches high, men are wearing them to go and chase cattle across the great plains of the wild west. So we see a kind of hypocrisy there, Elizabeth. Or is there something I'm missing? No, I think that because the masculinity of cowboys was so unassailable, culture actually allowed them greater sartorial expression. And so cowboys were seen as colorful. Even at the time

in 1888, there was an article about cowboys in their French heels. And so there is comment about these men wearing these sizable heels, but they were allowed to do it because they were already so manly in what they did on a daily basis. When masculinity is unassailable, greater sartorial risk can be taken. That's interesting. I mean, it reminds me of David Beckham wearing a sarong 20 odd years ago, and everyone kind of goes, oh, that's ridiculous. ridiculous he's wearing although he is a great footballer maybe it's all right or a kiss in the 70s yeah glam rock is sexy and macho and yet at the same time it's all about the lippy and the eyeliner and the big shiny trousers there's another quote from 1852 that says the high heel was truly both a bad and grotesque extravagance a useless and uncomfortable vanity a very break ankle fashion

I don't know if people are trying to say these are impractical for women it's holding them back or if they're saying that it's stupid women are stupid for wearing them what do you think lauren what have you ever encountered these sorts of arguments about women's fashion yeah definitely even today especially from like i don't want to say even older men but just general older generation what's this what's this stupid jeans with rips in them. What's the point of them? And it's like sometimes things don't have to have a point, do they?

You can break your ankle. They can be painful. Is there a progressive defense for saying high heels restrain women, Elizabeth? It is a very complicated story. And for me, the answer always is, if it's good, then all genders should want it. And so if it's restricted to the use of only a set of people, why is that? And so even when you think about women asking for the right to vote, you couldn't win. If you didn't wear heels, you wore sensible shoes. The arguments were you had desexed yourself to the point that you were not a male or female and couldn't get the right to vote. And if you wore high heels, you were clearly irrational and trying to use sexual manipulation to get the men in your life

to let you vote. Women often find themselves in this in-between space. We get onto the 1920s and after the First World War, we've obviously got the big changes in society. We have something called the new woman. Have you ever heard of the new woman, Lauren? No. What makes her different to the old woman? In the 1920s, the new woman smoked, she drank,

she went partying and danced. I suppose it's associated with the flapper look. If you think of kind of great Gatsby style parties with those dresses that are up over the knees, aren't they? Suddenly we've got legs on show. And the heel is part of the look as well, Elizabeth. Yeah, I find it really interesting that women abandoned so many parts of female dress that have been important for a long time. Cut their hair, they get rid of the corset, kind of. The hemline goes up, but they keep the high heel because the high heel at that point had so much meaning already that it couldn't be abandoned.

But it's in the 1920s that the ideal female figure was flat chested, no bum. And so people today say that the reason why women wear high heels is because it makes them biologically attractive to men. And it forces you to stand in a certain way with your breasts out and your buttocks back. But you can see that in the 1920s, that wasn't the case. So even how we stand in high heels is completely culturally constructed. One of the great designers of the 1920s is a guy called André Perugia. And he's got a quote, he says, in a world governed by a perfect economic conditions, including a two hour working day, there will be no sensible shoes. I love that.

Yeah. Who needs sensible shoes? Who needs sense at all? That's my argument. So Andre Perugia is a bit of a utopian. He's saying we should all be wearing ridiculously flamboyant, gorgeous shoes and working for two hours. And I guess the robots can do the rest. The obvious thing then is we get the 1930s and 40s and what do you think happens next in terms of the history of the high heel Lauren? It doesn't get shorter so do they go out of fashion again?

I don't recall seeing any men in heels in the 40s. No. Is Lauren right in terms of style is there a change? Yeah there is a change and it's this division between what desirable femininity looks like, and that's always high heels, and what it looks like to be fashionable. And so fashion introduces these big, thick platform shoes, like Ferragamo comes out with these wild platforms in the 1930s. And men hate them. They just hate them. And so the high heel continues in advertisements geared to men, in men's pornography, but in women's fashion, the platform or the wedge starts to take over. Is it more comfortable? Why? So Ferragamo actually invented the wedge as an orthopedic shoe, not knowing that it would take the world by storm. And so the high platform is no more practical than a high heel, but it was

a very futuristic structure and it looked so new and fresh. Also in the 1930s, you have to remember that the economy is really core. And so one of the ways that women could express that they were fashionable was not to change every bit of their outfit, but to change their shoes. It was a lower cost way to signal to the rest of the world that you still participated in fashion. James H. Kirby, who said in the New York Times in 1930, hooch and high heels are driving the nation to perdition and wanted high heels banned. So there's also a moral crusade going on against shoes. And in part, that is because of the high heels now center in male erotica, right? So these ideas that high heels are linked to female desirability means that when you see a woman wearing them, maybe her morals are suspect. And then J.B. Gates in Texas introduced a bill in the local senates to try and reduce high heels to a maximum of one and a half inches.

But he was reminded, of course, that that would affect Texan cowboys. And he was like, oh, damn it. So the hypocrisy is there, isn't it? Every time people are like, high heels are stupid, cowboys are like, actually, I think they're pretty cool and i'm wearing them but again the paris police also banned high heels at some points in order to encourage frugality amongst women so there are these rules coming in that say women shouldn't be wearing heels of a certain height i find it baffling that shoes cause so many arguments and cause men so much discomfort it seems like their shoes what would you ban though if you were in charge of a country and you could take fashion laws oh crocs are out goodbye unless you work in the nhs where i understand apparently they're very

comfortable crocs no get gone not even for like someone recently said me are they good for having at the back door to take the bins out i would rather stand on every slug in the city than wear a pair of crocs wow i feel the passion coming through all right i think we've learned here that actually sometimes people have irrational feelings about shoes. Hard to explain, but okay, no crocs for you. As you said, Elizabeth, the 1930s, 40s, we've got pinup girls, Rita Hayworth, wearing the high heels. But the wedge comes in and women are wearing wedges.

And that's obviously practical on the beach. You can wear it on a holiday and people are going on holidays more. And then we get on to Lauren's specialist subject, the war. You did it at school, Lauren, and you did mention in a previous podcast you learned about rationing. I did, yeah. Well, rationing also affects high heel shoes. Do you want to guess how?

Did they ration how high your shoe could be? Did they ration how many shoes you could own? We should do that anyway. We should definitely limit how many shoes people could own. I mean, it's a bit of that, but it's mostly about materials and the construction. So what is it about World War II and the lack of materials? It actually means that platforms are going to become a lot more popular. In the United States, where the war didn't come to the shores of the US, you really see platforms soaring in the 1940s. And that is because shoemakers couldn't use leather and rubber and other things that were needed for the war effort. But they could use bits of cork and a little bit of raffia

to create these confections. The other thing too, particularly in North America, is that women were going to work and working in munitions factories and being paid. And so they were able to take that money and there was a huge push that women should be buying fashion to help the economy. And so a lot of crazy shoes actually date to that period to encourage consumption. Fight Hitler, buy weird shoes. That's the slogan, right?

Exactly. Lauren, what would be your material saving, clever solution if rationing came back in? Chris Packets. Then I get a snack and a shoe all in one. Are you getting loads of Chris Packets and stacking the heel, or are you literally putting your foot in the Chris Packet? It depends where I'm going. Okay.

On a night out, when you're doing the Cobble Robber. On a night out, we talking like maybe like a whole family pack you know if i'm just like nipping to the post office i think just single layer it nice good bit of innovation and speaking of which it's in the 1950s that we get perhaps the most iconic modern shoe design which of course is really powered by modern engineering and innovations. And that is the stiletto. Lauren, do you know where the word stiletto comes from? Oh, because you can't stand still in them.

No, we think it's linked to a Renaissance era dagger that people would carry in Italy back in the 1400s, 1500s. Is that right, Elizabeth? It is in reference to the stiletto knife. Yes. In England, the stiletto meant the shape of the toe, which was a very pointy toed shoe. And in North America, the stiletto meant the heel. So there was a U.S. fighter jet called the stiletto.

Stiletto meant the heel. So there was a US fighter jet called a stiletto. Pencil skirts were called stiletto skirts. And stiletto shoes, depending on whether or not you were in New York or London, either referred to the pointy toe or to the metal heel. And so the stiletto is an engineering marvel because it's about putting a huge amount of pressure through a very narrow piece of material, which of course is steel. So it did require post-world war ii technology which was the extrusion of steel in those very narrow rods that could support a woman's weight

100 it's actually a rather brilliant bit of engineering that's then gone into fashion technology so it's it's pretty cool and the most iconic designer perhaps is roger vivier and he had quite a surprising client in the mid-1950s do you want to guess who it was lauren in the mid-1950s. Do you want to guess who it was, Lauren? In the mid-1950s. Think posh. Think posh. Someone in the royal family posh? Yeah, yeah. The king?

No, we didn't have a king then. No, it was the queen. She wore heels at her coronation. When she was a young, glamorous lady in her 20s, she wore heels back then, and he was the designer who dressed Her Majesty. So stilettos you know take on a life of their own they're advertised not just as glamorous but they then get advertised as

like functional footwear for daily occasions so you see adverts for women wearing them doing the hoovering cleaning the fridge so it's on the one hand it's glamorous on the one hand it's sexy and yet also women were being told that this was everyday footwear. They become obligatory in many different scenarios, but their height carries meaning. So if they're too high, then you risk looking like you're too sexy. If they're too low, you risk looking like a teenage girl. And so politics of the height of the stiletto was quite nuanced throughout the 1950s i am very 1950s in my ways then you wouldn't see me dead in a kitten heel i'm like i'm not 12 no the kitten heel is obviously associated with the young

wife or the youthful teen but the high heel is expected in the office, I suppose, for many women, perhaps was part of uniform, perhaps in certain jobs. But the heel is here to stay. And it also gets associated with children's toys. Is that a Barbie? It is a Barbie. She's got her own heels. When does that happen, Elizabeth? Barbie started out as a comic strip character in Germany for men. It was so popular that the newspaper began to make dolls of this very hyper-sexualized young woman. They rendered her as a doll and sold her at bars for men. And it wasn't until the founder of Mattel went to Germany, happened to see one of these dolls, and she brought it back to the US and transformed it into a fashion doll for young girls. But similarly, the German doll had that arched foot and had to wear high heels

and Mattel kept that part of the doll intact. So Barbie, we girls can do anything as long as we can do it in high heels, was sort of the story of Barbie for quite a while. I love the fact that if you go to a stag do, I could technically give someone a Barbie and I'd be doing an authentic traditional gift. Are you familiar with Bratz dolls? Yeah. Their whole foot came off it wasn't that they had a foot that you put little their whole foot just snapped off. And that way they could wear Doc Martens or stilettos right? They could wear one of each if they wanted, yeah.

So, I mean, the story of high heels, it's an amazing history and the gendering of it is so important. And obviously the story is ongoing. 60s, you've got boogie woogie. 70s, you've got glam and disco. 80s, you've got fetish clubs. 90s, you've got lap dancing clubs. And then in the 2000s, you get Sex and the City and the idea of choice feminism and beautiful heels that people want to own because they're beautiful, they're aesthetically pleasing. So the story's definitely not over. Our podcast is going to have to stop quite soon because we can keep talking for hours.

The Nuance Window! Time now for The Nuance Window. This is where our expert, Dr. Elizabeth, talks about anything they like for two minutes. Without much further ado, the nuance window, please. I think what's important in thinking about the heel is that it is simply an object. It has no actual biological function. And so one of the things that always rubbed me the wrong way about discussions of women and high heels at the turn of the 21st century was this idea that heels were evidence of female power. I constantly would think about what this meant, and if it was a signifier of power, why were men not embracing it? Power, you think, would be a non-gendered thing.

So I kept looking through the history of when men did wear heels. And up until this moment, the majority of times that men did turn to heeled footwear, it was a reclamation of a past male style. So in the 1970s, when you saw glam rock artists wearing heels, they were wearing heels that reminded them of Louis XIV, not of what was in their girlfriend's closets. not of what was in their girlfriend's closets. But today we have many men who are starting to wear female signaling or female referencing shoes in non-ironic ways and instead in ways that suggest that they are in fact embracing the concept that these heels can have power. So I wanted to end by talking about Billy Porter and his collaboration with Jimmy Choo that just came out.

Here is a fashion icon who is making footwear, the iconic Jimmy Choo stiletto in a range of sizes, and he's making them available for people of all sizes to simply wear. So if in fact this gets embraced, that means that a lot of the discourse around the heel and ideas of power that happened at the turn of the 21st century could in fact be coming to fruition. And if that happens, then I will break out a pair of high heels. But until then, I think that I will wait, but I very much look forward to what the next step is in the history of the high heel. Beautiful Lauren what's your thoughts on that? I just just Billy Porter in general I think Billy Porter needs to lead the future just for everything not even for shoes but yeah exciting.

So what do you know now? But yeah, exciting. So what do you know now? Well, it's time now to see how much our comedian, Lauren, has remembered. Lauren, are you feeling confident? I am. Well, I say that now. We have got 10 questions for you.

You did very well last time out. So let's see if you can match your score. Okay, question one. The earliest evidence for high heels is from which part of the medieval world persia it was persia a thousand years ago question two what were slap souls oh were they those green ones no think about the functionality of the mud oh the ones that were like the felt and then the heel and then, yes. There we go. The shoe on shoe on shoe.

Shoe on shoe on shoe. Yeah, I'll give you half a mark for that because you got there. Question three. Chopin were sometimes 54 centimetre high platform stilts worn by women in which Italian Renaissance city? They were the red top hat ones. And the city, Venice? Yes, absolutely. They were worn elsewhere too, but we showed you a Venetian one, I think.

Question four. What patriotic rivalry contributed to English men stopping wearing heels in 1740s? Germany. France. It was France. Question five. The self-covered heel was a wooden block

covered with leather, but what was a stacked leather heel made of? Was that one made of cork? No, it was lots of little stacks of bits of leather stacked up on top of each other. Question six. What colour were Louis XIV's iconic heels? Red. They were red. Question seven. High heels fell out of fashion for women after the French Revolution. What ancient shoes did they wear instead? Sandals. It was sandals, Grecian sandals. Question eight. In 1871, the New York Times said women couldn't be trusted with what responsibility because they wore high heels?

Voting. It was voting. Question nine. What is the stiletto heel possibly named after? A type of weapon. Dagger. It is an Italian dagger. And question ten. In the late 1950s, which popular children's toy was designed to wear high heels? Good old Barbie.

It was good old Barbie. Fantastic. I'm going to give you 7.5 out of 10, which is very good. Not bad. Well done. Not bad. Very, very good. You've filled your shoes beautifully.

And so whoever's coming next will have big shoes to fill as well. So Elizabeth, your instruction has clearly informed Lauren with lots of information now. My pub quiz question fact I'll be taking away is where investment comes from. As soon as I finish, I'm texting my dad being like, Alan, I've got a pub quiz question for you. Get your pen, write it down. Well, listeners, if you've enjoyed listening to this, and I hope you have, and you want to hear more about style icons from history,

why not check out our episode on Josephine Baker? And if you want to hear more of Lauren, of course you do, then check out the Mary Shelley episodes, one of our faves. And remember, if you've had a laugh, if you've learned some stuff, please do share this podcast with your friends or leave a review online and make sure to subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. All that's left for me then is to say a huge thank you to our guests.

In History Corner, we've had the electric Dr Elizabeth Semelhak from the batter shoe museum in canada thank you elizabeth you're very welcome and in comedy corner we've had the hilarious lauren patterson thank you lauren thank you thank you for having me to you lovely listener join me next time as we romp down the history runway with two different brainy besties but for now i'm off to go and buy myself some cowboy boots. Yee-haw! Bye! You're Dead to Me was a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4. The research was by Harry Prance.

The script was by Emma Neguse, Harry Prance and me. The project manager was Saifah Mio and the edit producer was Cornelius Mendes. Hello, everyone. It's Jamie Lang and Spencer Matthews here from Six Degrees from Jamie and Spencer podcast.

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