High Heels Were Invented for Men

High heels were invented for men. Not as fashion, as military equipment, built for Persian cavalrymen who needed to stand in their stirrups and shoot. So how did a soldier's tool end up on a king's feet, get banned for everyone but his court, and then get surrendered by men entirely? In this video: the Venetian platform detour (and the outdated theory the Met itself corrects), the Persian embassy that carried the style west, the Catherine de Medici story told the way it deserves, as a legend, the Sun King's red-heel edict, and the Great Male Renunciation that handed the heel to women, until the Beatles brought it back. Chapters: 0:00 Invented For Men 0:40 Before The Heel 1:25 The Platform Detour 2:27 The Soldier's Heel 3:15 Persia Comes To Europe 4:20 The Bride Legend 5:13 The Sun King 6:01 Not About Height 6:43 Women Take The Heel 7:15 The Great Renouncing 7:57 The Needle Heel 8:45 Full Circle Sources: BBC News Magazine, William Kremer, "Why did men stop wearing high heels?" (25 Jan 2013), with Elizabeth Semmelhack, Bata Shoe Museum The Metropolitan Museum of Art, "The Chopine" essay: https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/the-... Victoria and Albert Museum, "Standing tall: Size matters" (Shoes: Pleasure and Pain, 2015-16) National Geographic, "These shoes are nearly 2 feet tall, and women really wore them" (Sep 2023) Bata Shoe Museum, "Standing Tall: The Curious History of Men in Heels" (Google Arts & Culture) Music: "On The Flip" by The Grey Room, Density & Time - YouTube Audio Library This video was created with AI-generated narration and illustrations, researched from the sources above. Stories that rest on legend are labelled as legend in the video. Everyday things have the weirdest histories. Subscribe for a new one every week.