Have you ever wondered when platform shoes were worn or who wore them first? If you think it is that crazy disco chick from the 70's you would be wrong. The platform shoe goes back many centuries. Although no one knows for sure when people started wearing them there are all sorts of examples throughout history. The Egyptians displayed the shoes in art. Ancient Chinese, Turkish and Japanese cultures all saw men and women wearing platforms.
In Asia platforms were solely for the upper-classes. Men and women of the reigning classes, their courts and concubines all indulged in the platform shoe. Platform shoes were thought to have been worn in the 18th century in Europe to protect ones feet from the mud and muck of dirty urban streets. The ancient Mongolian horsemen wore platforms to keep their feet from falling out of their stirrups. And it has been noted that in Europe, over 2000 years ago in Greece, lead male actors wore platforms when performing on the stage.
Only the upper class men and women were allowed to wear high heels and platforms. That was until the Renaissance. When trade boomed, and income from trade soared, more people started to make more money and the bourgeois classes were able to get the shoes of the wealthy for their wives and mistresses. The platform shoe reached its peak in the shipping port of Venice. The courtesans and patrician women circa 1400-1700 wore a shoe called the"chopine".
They were originally used as an overshoe. But as time went by the women of the elite classes wore high chopines to literally and figuratively tower over others. They progressively got taller and some got to as high as 20 inches! According to historians, chopines caused an unstable and inelegant gait and women wearing them would have a servant or attendant accompany her so she could balance themselves. Due to the heights of some shoes mandatory walking sticks for balance were replaced if a servant was unavailable to aid the elegant lady as she did not wish to come crashing down to the ground. Eventually, Venice passed laws against these towering heels and heel heights went back to normal.
In France, the diminutive Catherine di Medici married King Henry the II in high heels. This sparked a fashion craze among men and women of the French court for beautifully crafted heels. Unfortunately, heels suffered a setback almost 200 years later with the French Revolution. The shoes were negatively connected to the opulence of Louis XVI and his court and heel heights dropped to their lowest in centuries.
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