What is the History of High Heels?

Summary

High heels began not as a fashion statement but as battle gear. From the 10th century, the Persian cavalry wore heeled boots to lock their feet into stirrups so they could stand and fire arrows from galloping horses. When Persian diplomats visited Europe around 1600, aristocratic men adopted the heel as a symbol of wealth and power—something only those who didn’t labor could afford to wear. King Louis XIV of France, a short man, famously favored high red heels that lifted him a few centimeters taller.

Women began wearing heels in the mid-to-late 1600s, and by the 1700s the styles split along gender lines: thick heels for men, slender ones for women. After the French Revolution, heels fell out of favor as a symbol of aristocratic excess, and men’s and women’s footwear diverged for good. Heels returned for women in the 1800s, and the invention of the steel-reinforced stiletto around 1950 cemented the heel as an emblem of femininity. Today high heels are celebrated as glamorous and empowering yet criticized for health harms and sexist workplace expectations—a tension that continues to define how we think about them.

Details

From Persian Saddles to European Courts

The high heel started as a tool of war. From the 10th century, soldiers in the Persian cavalry wore heeled footwear that they could hook into their stirrups, giving them the stability to stand up while riding and fire arrows during battle. This was a practical innovation, not a decorative one—the same logic survives today in the Western cowboy boot, which keeps a rider’s foot from slipping through the stirrup. Because horseback riding was expensive and time-consuming, the heel quietly picked up an association with wealth that would shape its entire future.

The journey from battlefield to ballroom happened through diplomacy. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, western Europe and the Persian Shah Abbas I shared a common goal of keeping the Ottoman Empire in check, and Persian military envoys visited European royal courts to build relationships. The striking Persian heel made an impression and came to be associated with might and manliness, since the Persian army was seen as powerful and its cavalry battle-hardened. The “battlefield accessory” had arrived in Europe, and the nobility took notice.

A Status Symbol for Powerful Men

Once in Europe, the heel became a costume of privilege worn almost entirely by men. During the Baroque period it quickly gained popularity among the nobility and became an integral part of male high society, evolving into a status symbol with no functional purpose. The very impracticality was the point: a heel literally lifted its wearer above the common folk who needed practical footwear for work. If you could barely walk in your shoes, you clearly didn’t have to.

The most famous enthusiast was French royalty. From the mid-17th century, a high red heel signaled exclusivity, and its main exponent was the Sun King, Louis XIV, who used his heels to gain a few centimeters of height. His predecessor Louis XIII had introduced the red heel to the French court, and elite members sometimes ordered their heels made even higher to distinguish themselves from those below them. The red heel was an exclusive marker of rank—a historical echo that survives in the trademarked red soles of Christian Louboutin today.

The Gender Split and the French Revolution

Women began adopting heels in the mid-to-late 1600s, and almost immediately the sexes developed distinct styles. Where men wore wide heels, women preferred a more slender, finer-looking design, and in the 18th century the curved Louis XV heel became popular. By the 1700s the divide was firmly established—men wore thick heels while women wore thin ones—and over the course of the Enlightenment men’s heels shifted toward practical riding boots or tall status boots. By the late 1780s, high thin heels had become fixed in the public mind as symbols of femininity and the supposed frivolity of women.

Then the heel crashed. By the time of the French Revolution, or possibly earlier, high heels were seen as outdated, like many other symbols of aristocratic extravagance, and flatter, more discreet shoes took over while men’s and women’s footwear became distinct. Men largely abandoned the tall, thin heel and never fully returned to it. This is the moment the heel stopped being a unisex emblem of power and started its long career as a women’s fashion object.

The Heel Returns and the Stiletto Is Born

After decades out of favor, heels crept back into women’s wardrobes in the 1800s. Moderately high heels for women made a comeback around the middle of the 19th century in button boots, lace-up boots, and evening shoes. The invention and mass production of the sewing machine around the 1850s boosted production, since machines could quickly and cheaply position the heel and attach the upper to the sole. The rise of photography also fueled demand, as the erotic associations of heels with feminine curves boosted their appeal toward the end of the century.

The 20th century brought the heel’s most iconic form. An innovation at the end of the 1950s was the pencil heel, strengthened with an internal steel pin for stability, which enabled the manufacture of stilettos—named after the stiletto dagger. The tall, skinny stiletto was invented around 1950 and quickly became an emblem of female sexuality, an association strengthened by World War II pin-up imagery that nearly always pictured women in heels. Styles have fluctuated since—block heels rose in the late 1960s and 1990s, with stiletto revivals in between—but the heel-as-femininity equation has held.

Glamour, Health, and the Modern Debate

Today the high heel sits at the center of a genuine tension. For all their glamour, sex appeal, and status, heels rank well behind flat shoes in safety, health, and comfort—they are linked to hip, knee, and back pain, bunions, and a greater likelihood of falling. Medical research backs this up: studies have connected heels to musculoskeletal pain, foot deformities, and even shortened calf muscle fibers in long-term wearers.

The cultural argument is just as live. Some people see wearing heels as prioritizing a sexist fashion diktat over health and mobility, while proponents argue they are instruments and symbols of female self-determination and empowerment. That debate has spilled into law and protest: in 2016 a UK receptionist named Nicola Thorp was sent home without pay for refusing to wear heels, sparking a petition, and several jurisdictions including British Columbia and the Philippines have moved to bar employers from mandating high heels at work. The shoe that began as a soldier’s equipment is now a flashpoint about who gets to decide what women put on their feet.

References

1. High-heeled shoe — Wikipedia
2. High heels: from the battlefield to the height of fashion — National Museum of Switzerland
3. Standing Tall: The Curious History of Men in Heels — Bata Shoe Museum
4. The High-Life: A History of Men in Heels — Google Arts & Culture (Bata Shoe Museum)
5. History of High Heels: Timeline, Invention & Origin — Study.com