Women's Fashions Are as Old as Time

If you could organize a procession of the shoe fashions known to history, it could tell you such a wealth of information about the social conditions of every age as would astonish you. The simply made sandal of ancient Greece suited the social and artistic aims of that age. As for the society of ancient Rome, which surpassed Greek society in its elegance and in the complexity of its affairs, though it fell short of it in devotion to the democratic spirit, it does not astonish us that none but freemen were permitted to wear shoes; indeed, the kind of shoe differed according to profession and social distinction. One could recognize a member of the Senate by looking at his feet, just as you would never see a commander wearing the shoe of a common soldier.

The truth is that the shoe has been the badge of social rank in every period of history. The actors of the tragedies on the Roman stage wore tall shoes of gilded leather, called in Latin Cothurnus and in English Buskin, as a sign that the wearer was one of the heroes of the tragic plays, while the hero of the comedies was forbidden to wear these shoes.

Shoe fashions in the Middle Ages in Europe reached an extreme degree of excess, and displayed the arrogance and pretension to grandeur that prevailed in that age. It happened in the year 1420 that Anne, princess of Bohemia, came to London to marry Richard II, king of England; and she and the members of her retinue wore shoes with long pointed tips. This fashion pleased the dandies among the young men of the English court, and they took to imitating it to such a degree that they were obliged to hang chains and ribbons adorned with jewels between the tips of their shoes and their knees, so as not to stumble in their steps or over other people's feet. When the extravagance of this fashion reached the point where these chains were fastened to the belt, the government intervened and passed a law threatening to prosecute anyone who wore a shoe whose tip exceeded a certain length, unless he was a person of high station.

A hundred years later the government resorted anew to this law to curb the excess in another shoe fashion; and this time the excess concerned the shoe's width, not its length. For the dandies of that

age had begun to imitate King Henry IV, who — as his great bulk required, having two broad feet — wore shoes ten inches wide. So the law limited them to six inches.

Yet fashion did not stop in its excess at this limit, but went beyond it to height. Some two thousand five hundred years ago the women of Greece strutted through the streets of Athens in shoes with high cork soles three inches thick.

And four hundred years ago the heel proper was invented. Curiously, it was invented to help the horseman keep his foot fixed in the stirrup; but fickle fashion exploited it for its own caprices and introduced several changes into it. Thus the nobles of the court of James I, king of England, wore shoes with high red heels — a fashion that many ladies imitated afterward. Ladies' shoes in that era possessed great grace: they had high heels and laces around the joint between foot and leg, and were made of soft leather or brocade. The sons of the democratic middle class wore flat shoes with a tongue jutting forward, adorned with square steel buckles. And these fashions are still current today, with some modification.

The passion for high heels reached its utmost at the court of Louis XIV, king of France, in the seventeenth century. The ladies of this court wore shoes six inches high, and so they minced along on the tips of their toes; indeed, their inability to walk properly was proof that they were ladies of wealth and ease, accustomed to strutting in their beautiful clothes, not to walking ordinarily like the rest of the daughters of the common people.

The truth is that high heels — in reasonable proportion — can add to the grace of the elegant woman. They not only add to the height of her figure; they make her feet look smaller. And they not only steady her movements; by tightening the muscles of the calf, they clothe her legs in a garment of slenderness and beauty of form. Add to this that the strangeness of woman's taste is what endears every new fashion to her and makes her feel pleasure and elegance.