Everything you ever wanted to know about the stiletto

Shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo, 1955

What do Louis XIV and Carrie Bradshaw have in common? Neither of them were fond of a flat. But the vertiginous heels sported by everyone's favourite fictitious New Yorker were only made possible thanks to technological advances in the late '40s and early '50s. Since then the stiletto has frequently jarred with fashion's mood – in the '70s it was derided for hindering women's ability to move – or chimed with it; in the power-dressing '80s it came to represent a certain formidable working woman. Another resurgence came with the arrival of Sex And The City, and 20 years on it remains a staple on the catwalk – and in women's wardrobes.

Elevated shoes have traditionally signified nobility, power and wealth. Venetian women with money in the 16th century wore chopines to keep their skirts out of the mud; soldiers fighting on horseback in 17th-century western Asia wore heels to secure their feet in stirrups; and in the 18th century, France’s King Louis XIV wore red heels as a symbol of his authority. Worn by all, regardless of gender, until the end of the 18th century, the heel then fell out of favour with men as fashion began to be associated with female frivolity. After exclusively becoming the purview of women, heels grew higher, held back only by the constraints of technology.

Block heels and raised platform shoes may have been worn since the Greeks, but the razor-thin stiletto is a 20th-century invention. Named after an Italian knife with a slender blade and needle-sharp point, the heel was engineered in the 1950s when new materials and techniques invented for aircraft carriers were applied to shoe construction. The use of aluminum and injection moulding to fuse metal and plastic made it possible to elongate and raise heels to new heights. The key was in finding a way to support the arch of the foot, taking the pressure off the toes and the heel, and allowing the shoe to move with the body rather than against it.

Stilettos typically range from one to five inches, but must be narrower at the tip than where the heel attaches to the last of the shoe. Designers Salvatore Ferragamo, Roger Vivier and André Perugia have all been credited with inventing the stiletto, sometime between 1948 and 1954. In the 1950s, the four-inch Ferragamo stilettos worn by Marilyn Monroe allowed her to hone her famously seductive walk; and by the 1960s the aspirational Hollywood veneer gave way to accessibility, as it became the shoe of choice for most women. The 1970s, however, brought with it a counterculture that rejected the stiletto, deriding it for being uncomfortable and hindering movement. But with the advent of power dressing in the 1980s, the stiletto staged a comeback – former connotations of the heel being a sexed-up accessory that lacked elegance were subverted to make it the ultimate fashion statement for the formidable working woman.

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