Hello kitten heels!
QUESTION Why are kitten heels so-called? A KiTTen heel is a short, slender heel, usually from 1.5in to 1.75in high, with a slight curve setting the heel in from the back edge of the shoe.
They appeared shortly after the stiletto high heel — known from the Forties, but which became haute couture in 1954 when French shoe designer Roger Vivier produced a set with a bold arch for Dior.
Stiletto heels were viewed as being overtly sexual, giving a suggestive wiggle to the walk, as typified by Marilyn Monroe.
Kitten heels were originally called ‘training heels’, deemed both more suitable for younger women and cheaper and easier to wear. The ‘kitten’ in question was Fifties slang for a young, inexperienced girl.
The kitten heel received a great boost in popularity following the release of the 1954 Billy Wilder movie Sabrina.
Audrey Hepburn stars as a once gauche girl who returns from Paris to America with a sophistication and charm that seduces both the men in her life, playboy David (William Holden) and father-figure Linus (Humphrey Bogart).
edith Head was drafted in to create Sabrina’s sophisticated look, and she and her apprentice, one Hubert de Givenchy, created some magnificent dresses for the production.
edith subsequently won the oscar for Best Costumes; this was controversial as Givenchy was thought to have produced the designs for most of the outfits.
The choice of kitten heels for Hepburn was, in part, pragmatic. She was 5 ft 7in and aged 25, playing a teenager against romantic lead Bogart who was 5 ft 10½ in— so she was put into kitten heels to keep her size down and give her an adolescent appeal.
The same thing happened again in Funny Face, released in 1957, when kitten heels ensured Audrey remained a little shorter than petite Fred Astaire.
Today’s most famous wearer of the kitten heel is our new PM Theresa May, once described as ‘a big beast in kitten heels’.
Alice Banners, Windsor, Berks. QUESTION In 1988, support act Guns N’ Roses famously upstaged the main act, Aerosmith. Are there any other occasions when this has happened? iT WAS December 1973 when i went, with a few mates, to the Kursaal in Southend. The act we were to see was Mott The Hoople, who’d had a good 18 months with a run of top-ten hits and one just outside.
unfortunately, apart from those hits, to my mind Mott had nothing to offer on stage, being a mix of glam rock and heavy metal with no sense of direction.
Perhaps my opinion was coloured by the sheer brilliance and stage presence of the support group we had just seen, four young men in leather jackets and denim jeans — a real rock group.
one of their best songs — Seven Seas of Rhye — was set to hit the charts in less than three months. in fact, Queen were destined to become the greatest rock group in the world and i saw them in ’73 for the princely sum of £1.25. Brian Lockyer-Skingsley,
Leighton Buzzard, Beds. on oCToBeR 5, 1963, i attended a concert in Watford in which the main act was the everly Brothers. Support acts included The Rolling Stones and Bo Diddley. Also appearing was Little Richard, whose frantic performance stole the show.
Derek Britchford, London Colney, Herts. in THe early Sixties, i was a teenager in Cardiff and was invited to a Roy orbison concert, where the support act was The Beatles, who had recently had their first hit record. The audience (mostly girls) screamed all through The Beatles session, then continued to scream for them all through Roy orbison! i was so disappointed — and i still like Roy orbison.
Val Bush, Alton, Hants. i WenT to see neil Young play his first uK concert in 1973 at the Royal Festival Hall. it was a much-anticipated concert on the back of an old Grey Whistle Test appearance and his album Heart of Gold charting.
A friend and i went (two tickets, £2 each) and the tickets where stamped ‘neil Young and Support’. The support group, whom no one had ever heard of, blew the whole audience away and stole the show. it was The eagles — their first uK appearance. A concert i will never forget! Garry Gardner, Staines-upon-Thames, Surrey. QUESTION The name Vanessa was coined by Jonathan Swift. What other popular personal names were created by authors? FuRTHeR to the earlier answer, when J. M. Barrie was introduced to a friend’s young daughter, he was said to be ‘a friend’.
The young child could not get her tongue round the term and on subsequent visits referred to him as ‘fwendy’, and this is the basis for the name of the character in Peter Pan that Barrie subsequently used.
John Hockey, Edlesborough, Bucks.
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