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 :)
Comments
Post a Comment