Here’s the deal with the heel
QUESTION When were high heels for ladies’ shoes introduced?
THE history of the heel is fascinating. It all started from the ‘patten’, a thick wooden or corksoled under-shoe attached by strings or laces and, also, in particular, the chopine, again made of wood and elaborately decorated.
It came to Europe from the Orient via Venice with heights reported at 13in/33cm, the purpose of both being to lift the wearer and their shoes up from street filth. Both were first worn in the Royal Courts of Spain and Italy in the 16th century.
In 1533, Catherine de’ Medici married the Duke of Orleans, later King Henry II, and her baggage contained shoes with heels, introducing the fashion to France.
The first kind of heel was the cork wedge, resembling a clog. Later came the beautiful curved heel known first as the Louis XV or French heel. This heel is thicker at the sole of the foot, narrow in the middle and then comes back out at the base. Much later, it was known as the lavatory pan heel, for obvious reasons.
Men during this period wore leather heels of medium height and women’s were of shaped wood. The ‘red heel’ of painted wood first made its appearance in the late 16th century, once again being of Venetian origin. From the 16th to 18th centuries it was a sign that the wearer was a ‘gentleman’ and also very wealthy.
By the 1640s, heels were high for both sexes and resembled the Cuban heel. In the 18th century, a Parisian maker built bespoke shoes for clients for right and left feet where, previously, soles were straight for both feet, resulting in acute discomfort. Red heels and soles, denoting aristocracy and wealth, were still worn until the French Revolution; any form of ostentation was dangerous to wear during the ‘Reign of Terror’.
High heels were popular for women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Then came the ‘stiletto’ heel in the 1950s – it looked like a stiletto-bladed knife, hence the name. Then Salvatore Ferragamo and Roger Vivier began using the principles of engineering to invent an entirely new heel. Famed for quality as well as extravagant designs, Ferragamo imbued stilettos with his brand of Italian glamour. His heels became synonymous with La Dolce Vita for a generation of Hollywood stars such as Marilyn Monroe.
From 1956, heels became higher after the plastic heel was strengthened by running an aluminium spigot down the shaft.
In the 1990s came the so-called ‘killer’ heel: a very high (5-6in/1316cm) version of the stiletto, and very difficult to walk in. There are now many styles of heel including block, column, cone, funnel, kitten, mini-kitten, moulded, peg, puppy, scarpin, sculpted, square, squat, stacked and wedge.
Anthea Hall, Stourbridge, West Midlands.
QUESTION I haven’t heard the word ‘yonks’ for yonks. What other slang words have gone out of fashion?
I RAN some slang past my teenage kids. They were aware of yonks, because I use it, but there were several terms they could not identify. The word ‘yonks’ is a shortened form of ‘donkey’s years’, itself is a colloquial expression meaning a very long time.
I was surprised to find that ‘bagsy’ had been forgotten. Once school kids would call ‘bagsy’ when claiming something before anyone else, often the front seat of the car. Apparently, the American ‘shotgun’ has now taken precedence. Many slang terms are hangovers from the two world wars. Fighting men were adventurous in language as well as nature and unrestricted by decorum. A favourite term that my dad used to use was ‘bags of mystery’ which meant sausages.
Other popular terms that seem to be dropping out of use include browned off, meaning bored and irritable or fed up (‘brown’ used to be slang for a British Tommy); bumf, for paperwork, a supposed derivative of ‘bum fodder’!; and take a dekko – ‘take a look at this’, which comes from the Hindi word dekho meaning ‘look’.
When in trouble we’d scarper, meaning ‘run away’. This came from the Italian escarpare in the 19th century, but after the German fleet was scuppered in Scapa Flow, it was reinvigorated.
Being ‘in the pink’ meant in the best possible health. Though in use since Elizabethan times, it can be found in Romeo And Juliet, yet is rarely used today.
Chris Allen, Reading, Berkshire.
QUESTION Why are dusters yellow edged with red stitching?
BEFORE mass production, it was standard practice to reuse old rags as cleaning cloths. One theory is that dusters came from the muslin cloths used in the making of butter and cheese, which were recycled in this way. The yellow staining proved so popular that weavers produced cloth dyed yellow for this purpose.
They may also have been derived from a yellow fabric known as nankeen. By the middle of the 18th century, Britain was importing a cheap, robust, and yellow-coloured cloth from China whose popular name was derived from the Chinese city of Nanjing. By the end of the 18th century, these fabrics were being made in Britain and had become the height of fashion; they were being made into trews, breeches and waistcoats. Dusters made from discarded nankeen or old clothes may have led to the association with yellow.
The red stitching used to hold the cloth together appears to be a modern invention – but has come to be associated with the classic duster.