Young Brunette Girl With Red Heels Strips Her Pink Lingerie In The Studio

The Venetians made the chopine into a status symbol revealing wealth and social standing for women, and tourists to Venice often remarked humorously on the outrageously high chopines. One visitor noted that they were "invented by husbands who hoped the cumbersome movement entailed would make illicit liaisons difficult" (McDowell, 1989). Already, we can find issues of domination and submission being associated with shoes much like the lotus shoes of China. Indeed, Chinese concubines and Turkish odalisques wore high shoes, prompting scholars to speculate if heels were used not only for aesthetic reasons but also to prevent women from escaping the harem (Kunzle, 2004).
Shoes were beginning to be made in two pieces during the 16th century, with a flexible upper attached to a heavier, stiffer sole (Swann, 1984). This new two-part shoe led to the heel as an actual part of the shoe rather than just an attachable overshoe.
It is sometimes suggested that raised heels were a response to the problem of the rider's foot slipping forward in stirrups while riding. The "rider's heel", approximately 1½ inches (4 cm) high, appeared around 1500. The leading edge was canted forward to help grip the stirrup, and the trailing edge was canted forward to prevent the elongated heel from catching on underbrush or rock while backing up, such as in on-foot combat. These features are evident today in riding boots, notably cowboy boots.
The simple riding heel gave way to a more stylized heel over its first three decades. Beginning with the French, heel heights among men crept up, often becoming higher and thinner, until they were no longer useful while riding but were relegated to "court-pony" wear. By the late 17th century, men's heels were commonly between three and four inches high.