And then a Man created...High heels!


Throughout the year there is a day designated specially for women when all men's eyes turn towards them. It is the 8th March – the International Women's Day. However during this day, apart from being showered with dozen of tulips, women have this unique occasion to see men in high heels who are trying their forces in the special marathon called 'A Mile in Her shoes'. The aim of this race is to protest against domestic and sexual violence but also to make men aware of the difficulty of wearing high heels. It's not as easy as it seams, right boys?! :)

Man wearing high heels? - The view rather uncommon for our times. Nevertheless, the history remembers the times when the privilege of wearing high heels was reserved only for men. Well...shocking but true! So, what key points in history has made high heels transform from a male attribute into the female one?

Necessity is the mother of invention
The idea of wearing shoes with a higher heel appeared in the ancient Greece while the theatre was setting its first steps. As the sound system didn't existed, in order to be better seen or heard by the audience, the actors equipped themselves with sandals on the wooden platform. So simple but how brilliant! :) In that time also the Persians was contriving with higher heels. They employed it into the horse riding while the higher heel ensured their feet stayed in the stirrups, making the riding more stable. After a while, because of the culture exchange, this solution appeared even in Europe and was quickly adopted by the nobility - the core of the European cavalry.

And here she comes!
The Renaissance – the age of progress and social changes. It is here where high heels are worn for the first time by women as the enchancer of their beauty. It happened thanks to one little women - Catherine de' Medici, the Queen of France and the 'Mother of Kings'. It must have been fate that Catherine could take pride of the enorme fortune of her family but not of the spectacular height as she measured only 1,50 meters. And so it happened. The frustration for not perfect appearance, pushed her into playing with fashion and wearing shoes with higher heel. From that very moment, higher shoes started to be associated not only with a men's privilege but also with the female one.

Us and them
As we know, one of the most characteristic weakness of the nobility is their pride what results in their constant searching of the way to cut themselves off from the folk. That is why, surprisingly or not, it was the high heels who gave them this opportunity, as associated by many with richness and aristocracy, put their owners, literally, above the others. This eccentricities reached its apogee during the reign of King Louis XIV who issued an edit in which he declared clearly that wearing high heels was the privilege of the aristocracy. It is not surprising that The French Revolution, preaching the idea of the Equality, cut the heels to the ground, simultaneously, making of them the symbol of  a fancy woman.

'50s – It's my number!
Up to 1950 a negative image of high heels was constantly present in the European society. An unexpected breakthrough came thanks to one man – Roger Vivier, french shoe designer. In cooperation with Christian Dior, he introduced fancy high heels with their inovative, slimer heel (so-called 'stilettos'), arosing immediately admiration among the female and even male audience and thus restoring the high heels thier due recognition as an icon of style and grace. It's amazing! Chanel liberated women from bodices but Dior let them suffer in a different way, by dressing them in high heels. Well...nobody said it would be easy, right? :)

As we can see, these subversive moments in the history brought significant changes not only in the fashion design but also in the human mentality. While the whole marketing machine started, the concept of wearing high heels changed irretreviably, as it became (finally!) the domaine belonging only to women but I would also say that some kind of Art :)

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