Heels in history and modernity

On Saturday, July 12, they ran in heels in Vitebsk.

This event was timed to coincide with the "Slavianski Bazaar" arts festival. The organizers of the running on heels were traditionally the State Institution "Center for Fashion and Beauty" Crystal Nymph ", the Regional Public Organization" Belarusian Fashion Chamber "and the PR and Communications Agency" Open Podium ".

Conditions for participants - a heel of at least 7 cm plus knowledge of safety rules. Prizes - shoes from "Marko" and jewelry.

As a result, Svetlana Markova became the winner of the competition. This girl became famous for the fact that, as it turned out, she runs in heels the best in Belarus. But there were also more interesting nominations in the competition, for example, "The most beautiful legs", in which Yulia Kozlova was recognized as the winner.

On a hot July day in the city of Marc Chagall, girls ran in heels, wanting to compete for several diamond jewelry and several pairs of shoes. It's time to think about when heels appeared and why.

The first heels, or rather even platform shoes, appear in the days of Ancient Greece. In ancient Greece, these shoes were used by actors to make them taller, and they were visible to viewers from the gallery. This is the first purpose of heels - to increase height. (According to other sources, shoes with heels appeared even earlier - in Ancient Egypt among the peasants, whom these shoes helped to move more comfortably through the fields and beds.)

The second original purpose is to make the shoe more resistant to wear and tear. After all, it was noticed that the fastest of all the sole deteriorates in the heel area, hence the heel. It can shrink in size, wear out, but a hole still does not form.

The third function of the heel, or rather even the platform, is to protect the feet from dirt. It was for this purpose that in the cities of medieval Europe, both men and women wore shoes with high wooden soles. By the way, men will wear shoes with heels at balls of the 17th century during the Baroque period.

The shoes with high soles also had a fourth function - to deprive a woman of the opportunity to walk quickly and confidently. This designation for platform shoes was invented in ancient China. Along with the custom of bandaging the legs (girls' legs were tightly bandaged from early childhood to prevent them from growing and to keep a small foot), uncomfortable wooden shoes on a platform made a woman's gait unhurried and extremely difficult without outside support. The Chinese were convinced that this was able to restrain the decline in morals in society.

A very high platform, up to 60 cm high, appears during the Renaissance (XV-XVI centuries) in Italy. And already in the 17th century. from such shoes, shoes are created with the prototype of a modern heel. True, it, nevertheless, was a shoe on a platform, but with a cutout in the middle. Thus, there were two heels - under the toe and under the heel.

And already in the 18th century in Europe they wear shoes with the heels we are used to. For example, the then ruler of France, Marie Antoinette, wore shoes with a heel of 5.8 cm, famous for recommending to her subjects to eat cakes instead of bread, which was not available. In 1794, a machine was invented in America for attaching heels to the sole of shoes.

Stiletto heels were the latest invented. Hairpins appear only in the twentieth century - they were invented in the 1950s in Italy.