Why did men stop wearing high heels?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21151350

by jamesjyu • 13 years ago

116 55 13 years ago

bbc.co.uk

pg2• 13 years ago

They didn't. This is what cool people were wearing when I was a kid:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/113052867/vintage-mens-1970s-dex...

brudgers2• 13 years ago

As in earlier times, royalty (of cool) wore even more impractical shoes:

http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/k/kiss/album-destroyer.jpg

corin_2• 13 years ago

Surely the fact that you added "when I was a kid" implies that "they didn't" is incorrect? But yes, does seem to be (or at least have the potential to be) a cyclical trend rather than a long-term change.

btilly2• 13 years ago

They acknowledge that. From the article:

The 1960s saw a return of low heeled cowboy boots for men and some dandies strutted their stuff in platform shoes in the 1970s.

But the era of men walking around on their toes seems to be behind us. Could we ever return to an era of guys squeezing their big hairy feet into four-inch, shiny, brightly coloured high heels?

Indeed, looking at those shoes, they are much more comfortable than high heels for women. (But I would not want to wear them. At 6'3" I already am taller than I'd like...)

pg2• 13 years ago

Yes, I saw that. But what the author doesn't acknowledge is that this counterexample invalidates his thesis. Clearly someone who read a previous draft pointed out that he was mistaken, and the author added a qualification to try to minimize the damage. But in fact it was not merely "some dandies" who wore high heels in the mid 70s. It was the default fashion for young men.

robbiep2• 13 years ago

Are platforms really high heel? I mean if you shaved an inch and a half off front and back it seems to me you would have a normal height male shoe.. As opposed to the toes on the ground and a raised heel of a true high heel

brudgers2• 13 years ago

Some men wore such shoes. Others wore shoes with the sole more parallel to the ground.

http://www.dressthatman.com/cat-ACCE-shoes.htm

anigbrowl• 13 years ago

Those are platforms rather than high heels. If you take away the thick sole (ie make it the same thickness as under the instep) and reduce the heel by the same amount, it's not that high relative to current norms.

Also, consider that while platforms were fashionable in the US during the disco era, this is a BBC article. They didn't catch on over in Europe at all. Thinking of 70s movies, I'm not sure that platforms were even that popular outside of the youth culture, and the disco culture at that, whereas high heels are ubiquitous among adult women of all ages except the very old who are unable to wear them in comfort.

nacker• 13 years ago

"They didn't catch on over in Europe at all."

Totally wrong. I was born in 1960, and at my British school if you didn't wear platforms you were laughed at. They were practically compulsory!

guelo• 13 years ago

They look to have as much relative heel as today's men's dress up shoes.

bane2• 13 years ago

that sounds about right, performance oriented shoes ended up replacing them as "cool" shoes sometime in the 80s.

http://www.liketotally80s.com/reebok-hightops.html

russell• 13 years ago

I was on the cusp of 30 when men were wearing platform shoes and turned 30 with the entrance of disco. I will admit that I was not fashion conscious; my girlfriend would call me fashion unconscious. Those of us in software were into hiking boots and camping in the Sierra and running shoes in the flatlands. Our girlfriends wore long hair and little makeup and never appeared in the pages of Seventeen or Cosmo. We laughed at guys in platform shoes. They were shorties trying to look tall. Annie Hall was a few years down the road but we were all moving in that direction.

wheels• 13 years ago

Where I grew up the men still wear high heels. We call them "cowboy boots".

incision• 13 years ago

I'm confused...

Most men's shoes have a raised heel. If you spend time wearing intentionally flat shoes for weightlifting or similar it can be quite awkward to put on a "normal" pair of shoes.

_delirium• 13 years ago

It's common to have a low-rise heel, but heels >2" on men's shoes are pretty uncommon.

corin_2• 13 years ago

On the subject of your being confused between "men don't wear high heels" and "most men's shoes have a raised heel" - a colleague/friend of mine (woman) was wearing shoes and I remarked about them being high heels (can't remember exact context) and she got rather argumentative about the fact that they were just shoes, not high heels (heels were a good ~1inch raised).

I guess my point is that any shoe raise your heel at least a tiny bit, so it depends where you draw the subjective line between "normal" and "high".

pestaa2• 13 years ago

My girlfriend sometimes asks me why impractical and uncomfortable shoes dominate the markets; why can't they make simple and useful ones that men wear? I've always speculated it was simply demand & supply.

Now I know it is the great legacy of our male aristocrat ancestors. What a joke.

Though, she makes a much better impression on me than Louis XIV ever could.

thisone• 13 years ago

I feel for her. I recently tried to find good looking but practical (ie can walk 4 miles in) shoes.

Yes I found a couple of pairs, all over £130, and all out of stock in my, normal, size.

I would have paid that much, if only they had them in stock!

pestaa2• 13 years ago

Ah yes. Combine that with the fact that her foot size is EU 35. Conversion table: http://www.i18nguy.com/l10n/shoes.html#adult

In other words, it is the smallest foot size registered for adults. Practically non-existent, as it is too small for adults and too big for kids.

A very effective filter for a full shoe store to be boiled down to 1-2 pairs immediately.

T-hawk• 13 years ago

How are you defining good looking? Of course there exist athletic sneakers suitable for miles of walking, for both sexes. What's wrong with those?

Of course this is a common request for women's shoes, to combine attractiveness and comfort. But that ends up being contradictory. Attractiveness is often defined as some combination of a raised heel and exposing as much of the foot and toes as possible. That means little material and padding, perhaps some kind of strap fasteners that chafe, and walking with the ankle unnaturally contorted on the high heel. These are exactly contradictory to the requirements to make a comfortable shoe, which means a natural flat sole, covering the toes for protection, and surrounding the foot with plenty of padding to provide support up to the ankle.

Oversimplifying for effect, if you define attractiveness as heel height, then having both attractiveness and comfort indeed becomes impossible.

That all said, there probably is room to innovate in the space in managing those tradeoffs, or at least in bringing that to a wider market. Just not as much as one might think, without realizing that there are inherent contradictions in these opposing requirements.

Mz5• 13 years ago

Without bothering to read the article: High heels were invented to help with stirrups while horseriding. Cowboy boots still have them. If most modern men do not wear them, it might be because they drive cars rather than ride horses.

darien• 13 years ago

Reminds me of the theory that men stopped wearing hats because of cars. http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/05/04/152011840/who-k...

Mz5• 13 years ago

That's been discussed here before. I was kind of pissed on for agreeing with it. After most of the smoke was over and the party disbanded, someone (thaumaturgy, iirc) pointed out that cars became more aerodynamic because of the higher speeds of highways, and that might be the missing link as to why interstates and cars helped kill men's hats. Before that, cars were boxy enough to still wear a hat in one.

Edit: Having now read the high heel article, they aren't 100% correct about heels being useless in the muddy streets of the era. Staying up out of the mud was part of the point of heeled boots of the three musketeers type era.

edmccard2• 13 years ago

For brimmed hats, the problem in cars (at least in my experience) is not crown-to-roof clearance, but the fact that the brim hits the headrest, forcing you to lean forward uncomfortably (or to squish the brim).

Looking through car advertisements, it seems like headrests became common in the mid-to-late Sixties, after hat-wearing had already started to decline.

azernik• 13 years ago

With reading the article:

Actually, they went out of fashion even earlier. The Persians invented them for horseback riding, and then European aristocracy adopted them to look macho; they increased the height until they got impractical, though. Female aristocracy then adopted them during a trend toward male features in women's fashion in the 17th century.

Then in the Enlightenment, men's fashion took a turn for the practical and sober (Man is Rational!) while women's clothing kept the old ostentatiousness (Woman is Emotional and Sentimental!) - including the heels. So by about 1740-60, men's heels had gone definitively out of fashion, while women kept wearing them.

Mz5• 13 years ago

I have also now read the article. And I am a woman. It is pretty common for women drivers to remove their high heeled shoes before driving. I have known lots of women to keep a separate pair of flats handy or just drive barefoot. It is safer. I have driven in heels, probably just long enough to take the damn things off.

There are a great many things which influence fashion. Available technology. Lifestyle. Cultural trends. Even sometimes practical considerations.

I will suggest though that by the mid 1700s, anyone "important" was more likely to be riding in a carriage than on horseback.

russellallen2• 13 years ago

I'd place a big Citation Needed next to the whole Enlightenment = Sober clothing thing. Sounds like a big oversimplification. Sure there was a reaction to baroque excess but placing it at the foot o the Enlightenment is a bit just-so-story for my tastes.

SilasX• 13 years ago

I have it on good authority that women drive cars.

Mz5• 13 years ago

I actually hate driving and happen to be female. Please don't tempt me to make jokes about "real women have (male) chaufers". (When I was married, I made my husband drive as much as possible.)

But have an upvote. It is at least a better argument than the other one so far.

fakeer• 13 years ago

Because not wearing them is not stupid and and not painful either. I am sure about the latter, BTW.

martinced• 13 years ago

The question is: "Why are women still wearing them?"

TFA talks about it a bit but, basically, it's sexier because of the curves it gives to the women wearing them (I apologize for being rude here but it gives them what many men consider a nicer looking ass). But IMHO it only started to make sense once women started to dress with fit/slim clothes. Which may be related what TFA mentions: that when they first started appearing regularly it was on nude or kinky postcards in the late 19th century.

Why do male like them, because, from TFA:

natural courting pose found amongst mammals, with an arched back and protruding buttocks

jamestc• 13 years ago

That's weird. I didn't think humans were susceptible to "natural courting poses". Is there any scientific literature on this that isn't based purely on speculation?

stcredzero• 13 years ago

I cannot lie...

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

There is lots of literature in psychology and in design (makes you see a Ferrari in a whole new light). It was the only interesting part in my freshman psyche class at USC.

marvin• 13 years ago

This is the kind of pseudoscientific, evo-psych stuff I have a very hard time believing unless someone comes out with very compelling evidence.

lookACamel• 13 years ago

Arched back, i.e. boobs sticking out.

xijuan• 13 years ago

Somehow, I wish men could still wear high heels now. Then woman may not prefer tall men so much.

StavrosK• 13 years ago

What makes you think tall men won't wear high heels?

Mz5• 13 years ago

I kind of doubt that. Recent discussions on HN have indicated that height is probably a proxy for good nutrition. (I linked to some of those discussions and supporting articles in a recent blog post of mine: http://www.novemberwest.com/blog/2013/01/28/beauty-and-the-g...

No, I am not going to get the links for you. HN freezes up my browser. I am not that much of a masochist.)

cdrxndr• 13 years ago

Arguably a little off topic, but it struck me that Louis XIV had a well known "trademark" of always wearing contrasting red soles and heels, and that this was even historically notable since he "protected" his trademark by not allowing people out of his court to wear them. And still Christian Louboutin has won the right in the US to a legally granted monopoly on contrasting red-soled shoes?

Slapped down: http://nymag.com/fashion/11/fall/christian-louboutin-red-sol...

Wins on appeal: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/nyregion/court-rules-loubo...

I just can't get over the fact that a private company owns the trademark right to contrast red soles on high heels ... Louis, back me up.

jseifer• 13 years ago

I'm reasonably sure this HN submission came from a discussion on the latest Geek Friday (http://5by5.tv/geekfriday/59). I say this because someone posted the article to the Google+ group (https://plus.google.com/107635569257603441624/posts/HmNguCkZ...) and then it wound up here. It's a pretty interesting article, though I still think heels and wedge shoes are, at this point, an elaborate prank.

bane2• 13 years ago

I don't think that we did in high-end shoes. Any window shopper looking into a modern day high-end shoe store will see plenty of shoes with heels. It's just that the current fashion is to make them a bit lower. Plus when fashion dictates trouser length to be long, it keeps the trouser bottoms from getting dirty.

https://www.google.com/search?q=fine+mens+shoes&hl=en...

also see many forms of men's dancing shoes

fauigerzigerk• 13 years ago

It's intersting that men were the ones who picked up Persian fashion first. Nowadays, men's clothing is utterly boring. The small men's section is mostly located in the basement or on the top floor of department stores, and what you find there is basically two or three kinds of uniforms.

Why did men stop wearing high heels?

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