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

Most of the lower class in ancient Egypt walked barefoot, but figures on murals dating from 3500 B.C. depict an early version of shoes worn mostly by the higher classes. These were leather pieces held together with lacing that was often arranged to look like the ankh symbol, which represents life. There are also some depictions of both upper-class males and females wearing heels, probably for ceremonial purposes. Egyptian butchers also wore heels, to help them walk above the blood of dead beasts. In ancient Greece and Rome, platform sandals called kothorni, later known as buskins in the Renaissance, were shoes with high wood or cork soles that were popular particularly among actors who would wear shoes of different heights to indicate varying social status or importance of characters. In ancient Rome, sex trade was legal, and female prostitutes were readily identified by their high heels (Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece by Nigel Guy Wilson, 2005).
During the Middle Ages, both men and women would wear pattens, or wooden soles, that were clearly a precursor to the high heel. Pattens would attach to fragile and expensive shoes to keep them out of the mud and other street debris when walking outdoors (Swann, 1984).
Elizabeth Semmehack, curator at the Bata Shoe Museum, traces the high heel to horse riders in the Near East who used high heels for functionality, because they helped hold the rider's foot in stirrups. She states that this footwear is depicted on a 9th-century ceramic bowl from Persia.
In the 15th century, chopines, a type of platform shoes, were created in Turkey and were popular throughout Europe until the mid-17th century. Chopines could be seven to eight or even 30 inches high, requiring women to use canes or servants to help them walk. Like pattens, chopines were overshoes, but unlike the pattens, chopines were worn almost exclusively by women. They were usually designed with cork or wood stacked as the heel.