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  • The first high heel ever was a piece of military footwear.

  • People in West Asia had been tremendous horse riders,

  • and that's how they fought, they rode in the saddle and they stood up

  • to shoot their bows and that meant you need a heel to keep

  • you in the stirrups, nice and stable.

  • The Shah of Persia, he's called Abbas the First,

  • he sends off some emissaries into Europe and they turn up

  • wearing high heels and everyone goes...

  • ...so suddenly this military clothing becomes adopted in Europe.

  • But it's a little bit later on, in the early 1600s, that we start

  • to see heels coming in, and it starts with the blokes,

  • it's for being manly and butch. But what happens quite quickly

  • is women start to emulate male fashion, and part of that

  • is they start wearing men's shoes. The real big moment is when Louis XIV

  • of France starts wearing heels, because he's quite a small man,

  • and he famously has red heels - that Louboutin mirrored

  • later on in the 20th Century.

  • Suddenly everyone at the court is wearing heels.

  • Heels go through a bit of an up and down history

  • and the 1700s, philosophers are talking about the rationalism of men,

  • by contrast, women are said to be emotional and sentimental

  • and can't be trusted to do important things like think.

  • And so men are being advised to wear rational shoes

  • and high heels are not rational.

  • The 1860s, this is when women's heels start to become sexy.

  • We have photography, a brand new technology,

  • and quite often in pornography of this period,

  • you're seeing women still wearing their boots,

  • their shoes with the heels on, so it becomes erotic.

  • Hollywood had a huge influence on the rise of heels as the symbol

  • of sexiness. In the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe famously quoted,

  • I can't think of the exact words but she said you know...

  • we owe the man who invented high heels so much...”

  • ...she was speaking on behalf of women. For Monroe, who was about

  • glamour and beauty and sexiness, she felt that that was an asset.

  • People can tell whether women are wearing high heels without actually

  • seeing their feet, so it is that posture, change in the gait.

  • But a more recent study has shown that actually it's changing the shape

  • of the spine that is actually the attractive thing.

  • We looked at all the research on high heels and they are not healthy,

  • there was increased risk of musculoskeletal conditions,

  • bunions and pain.

  • I think they're too iconic and too much a part of aesthetics and imagery

  • and history and power and sex to ever go away,

  • and I think they'll always be there.

  • I'd rather go through quite a lot of pain and wear them and look nice,

  • and suffer for it, I think.

  • I'm crazy about fashion, I think we all are.

  • And I think any smart woman would go on wearing them,

  • irrespective of what the consequences are.

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The first high heel ever was a piece of military footwear.

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