High Heels: To Wear or Not to Wear?

By Victoria Moss
Viva

Ever since Pricewaterhouse Coopers temp receptionist Nicola Thorp launched a campaign to make it illegal for a company to require women to wear high heels at work, there’s been a crusade against any shoe that’s not flat, with heels deemed “sexist”, “archaic” and “medieval”.

Despite the fact that the Cannes Film Festival shouldn't be held up as any sort of measure for real-life dressing, images of Julia Roberts and Kristen Stewart de-heeled on the red carpet have bolstered the anti-heel campaign.

But now high-heel fans are fighting back. Rooted very much in the real world, Jenny Brown, headmistress at St Albans High School for Girls, mused that while “it’s certainly not healthy to clamp your toes into a ludicrous, masochistic machine for hours on end”, on the other hand “they are the final flourish for formal wear; suits just don’t look as good without them”.

She has a point. At the Telegraph, we are pro-choice - wear heels, wear flats, generally just do what makes you smile - and bemused by archaic edicts on dress, but there is a reason so many women are happy to put themselves through the added inconvenience of high heels.

"The positive way that heels make some women feel shouldn't be underestimated," says Kay Barron, fashion features director of Porter. "I am more often in heels than flats, and not just because of the extra height they lend my petite frame, but because they make me feel more put together and authoritative in situations when I need them. I'm not talking about towering stilettos, but even an extra two inches help, where I find flats can't."

In the last few years, we have witnessed something of a shoe-volution, with flats - from brogues to ballet pumps, sliders to trainers - becoming fashionable. Since Gucci installed Alessandro Michele as creative director last year, we've been seduced by loafers - flat, furry, heeled - and even that old Nineties stalwart, the mule. But if flats have been revived recently, this being the fashion world, next season there is set to be a flurry of spindly stilettos, after they were seen on the catwalks at Versace and Saint Laurent.

Charlotte Moore, editor of InStyle, is in favour. "My calves are lengthened, my thighs are stretched, my head is lifted," she says of elevated footwear. "I can walk in heels - I can run in them - and I feel way, way sexier in them."

I have largely ditched heels. I alternate between my chunky (flat) Marni loafers and Nike Air Force 1 trainers. There’s something liberating about pairing a dress with trainers (white, box-fresh, please). But there are always occasions when I’ll crack out a heel - maybe it works better with my outfit, maybe I just feel like being taller, maybe I know I’m going to get an Uber taxi there and back.

For there is something powerful and, hell, just pure fun about strutting into a party in a fabulous high heel - as long as it’s the right heel. Because, yes, heels can look great with a suit, but they can also look atrocious. City workers clipping along the street with their ground-down stiletto heels screaming to be taken to the cobblers, leather sprouting upwards from the tip - not chic. Giant platform, giant stiletto court shoes? So WAG and so over. Ditch them.

 The Daily Telegraph

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