A Micro World History of the Heeled Shoe

Since Aristotle and Plato’s tragic plays first debuted in amphitheaters, wooden platforms and raised shoes have been worn. Frankly, who - from an ancient Greek theater-goer to a modern-day Jeddah-based mother - doesn’t love a better view? In the 17th Century, the Persian cavalry wore heeled shoes to secure a better footing in stirrups while riding horseback. Meanwhile, in the same era, Venetian women wore platforms (known as chopines - a form of overshoe) so high a Spice Girl would get vertigo. The chopines enabled aristocratic women to navigate muddy terrain and keep the hems of their gowns clean. Quite right, too.

All across the globe, women have found much practical use and joy in a heeled shoe. But there is nothing sensible about the stiletto. Nor is glamor natural. Read on to find out how the stiletto has conquered the vagaries of fashion’s fickle trend treadmill and remained unfathomably relevant.

How Does the Stiletto Design Work?

High heels are centuries old across the fashion history books, but it was the technological advancements brought about in the late 1940s and early 1950s that enabled the extremes of the stiletto to be created. This happened by applying learnings from aircraft engineering and the manufacture of radically new materials. It is a work of logic from aerodynamics that enables an extreme heel to ‘work’. A metal shaft connects the base of the shoe to the spike of the heel, often fused with a plastic molding, enabling the shoe to move with the foot. This gives sufficient support to the arch of the foot and therefore generates enough balance and sturdiness to hold the force of walking and the weight of one’s body on a needle-like point. 

Who Designed the First Stiletto?

Stiletto, in Italian, means ‘small dagger’. There is a mystery as to who actually invented the very first stiletto but Salvatore Ferragamo, the beloved Italian shoe designer, claims to have created the first thin steel reinforcing bar that lent support to the ‘dagger’ of a stiletto heel. French footwear designer Roger Vivier was the one who brought stilettos to the house of Dior in 1953. Vivier was invited by Christian Dior himself to be the debut shoe designer working for the maison. There is also evidence that French designer André Perugia crafted his own stiletto design during a similar period.