Modern Realities and Wedding Traditions

A number of you, dear listeners, have asked if I would ever do a story about high-heeled shoes. And I've always demured because the thing is, I actually already did a story about high-heeled shoes. It's just that I did it twelve years ago, back when I was 23 years old and I sounded like this. Heels affect the way you move through the world. Maybe I don't sound different. I feel like I sound really different. But this was actually the first fashion story I ever made. It was back when I was working at the Incredible Architecture and Design Podcast, 99% Invisible, and this was the first time that I was like, what if we consider ed clothing design ? But the interesting thing is, when I made this, it was 2014 . And that happened to be a very particular time in shoe fashion, because at the time, in 2014, high heels were really, really tall. They were like six or seven inches tall. And not that high heels that tall don't exist anymore. Obviously, they still exist. But these days, when I see heels around, they tend to be a low, thick block heel. So it was really funny listening back to this montage I made of people hacking their shoes to try to make them more comfortable. Like, listen to this. This feels really dated to me. YouTube is full of hacks and tips and tricks. Put the heel liner in and it will prevent your shoe from like flopping off. MacGyver type fixes for the shoe. All you need is felt and a glue stick and a glue gun. Remember guys, do not burn yourself. Like are people still doing that? Are people still MacGyvering their heels? This felt very 2014. High heels were in fashion at that time. But are they the leading shoe trend? Not at the moment. I popped over to the Fashion Institute of Technology to talk to Colleen Hill. I am Senior Curator of Costume at the museum at FIT. I started thinking about high heels in about 2012, but it really was this moment in time when extreme heels were the shoe going down the runway. Really extreme heels. They were absolutely the leading shoe trend. So when there are these like massive sculptural heels that are stomping down the runway, does it actually make its way out into the street? Like were you seeing people wearing these around? I was, believe it or not, and I was wearing some of them too, but obviously I was much younger at the time. So all day? You wore them all day? Yeah, I would wear them all day. So why did high heels used to be so tall? This trend, this trend for really high shoes that started around maybe 2010 was first viewed as an alternative to the it bag. This early 21st century, really late 90s, it bag phenomenon. In the 90s, giant corporate groups like LVMH and Kering were buying up fashion houses and they were encouraging designers to send handbags down the runway to try to sell more accessories. And LVMH is a huge part of that. LVMH had shareholders to please, and the markup on bags is really high, but consumers are willing to spend on it. When it comes to handbags, you can get a lot of wear out of them. Bags also don't require sizing, which is much easier for both the manufacturer and the buyer. Anyone can fit into a handbag. Bags became massive money mak ers. They became these objects of mass obsession. But as more and more fashion houses came out with a rotation of bags, it became harder to stand out from the pack. Designers were thinking about what came next and designers were seeing these high-end shoes as a way to make these almost sculptures for your feet. I mean they were really extreme both in height, but also lots of color, lots of embellishment, and they were really eye-catching. That was really in contrast to what people were seeing as much less interesting clothing on the runway at the time. During Gray's sleek 90s minimalism, shoes gave a little permission to play. And then came Carrie Bradshaw. I think sex in the city cannot be underestimated in its influence. It's part of where people got the idea that you could wear high high heels all day long, not fathoming that Sarah Jessica Parker or Cynthia Nixon could remove their shoes between takes. That's where we start to really know shoe brands and designers, I think really prompted in part by sex in the city. But as we get into the 21st century and the idea of fashionable shoes, I think when this becomes more of a thing. There's really this kind of amping up of who's doing great shoes and where they're sold and who's doing the best new thing. And a lot of shoe departments, particularly here in New York, were expanding. In 2007, SACS announced their shoe department was big enough to warrant its own zip code. 10022 Shoe. In 2008, Barney's and Macy's also announced their devoted shoe departments. That says a lot about how shoes were becoming much more important in the fashion market . And this gets to where I was when I made that episode about high heels for 99% invisible. And when I listened to this old episode, it really was a missive from another time. When fashions change, it's symptomatic of larger societal shifts. Fashion changes are these mass movements dictated by millions of individual realities. And I love nothing more than looking at a recent trend with the benefit of hindsight. Why did high heels used to be so towering? And what changed? What made them lower and squatter? So I'm gonna play that old episode I made, it's short, and then we're gonna pick it apart a little bit and talk about what's happened since after the break Hey listeners, right now there are some amazing news stories coming out of Earhustle, our fellow Radiotopia show and the podcast about the daily realities of prison life. There's one episode called My Favorite Color, where we hear the conversation between a father and daughter who haven't seen each other in 26 years, partly because the daughter followed in her dad's footsteps and paid a heavy price for it. In another, we meet a guy who at the age of 13 got a tattoo job on his face that would influence the course of his life. And you know what? He's got no regrets. There's a story about what it's like to be betrayed by a dog, and another that explains how to hug someone when hugging itself is against the rules. These are the kinds of stories you hear on Earhustle. They're raw, they're deep, often very funny, and what Iberglass calls decidedly untragic. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Also check out their live show, which is swinging through the Northeast US at the end of May. Details are at earhust .com slash tour. The other night I was walking past my friend's bakery and she was like, I'm actually in the bakery right now. Do you want to come over for a drink? And I was like, What are you doing in the bakery so late? I imagined she was rolling out dough or prepping fillings. Nope, she was running payroll. It was a huge headache, especially considering she had to wake up at 5 the next morning to go do her actual job. No matter who you are, a baker, an artist, a podcaster, you just gotta spend some time chasing down W9 forms, running payroll, distributing benefits, and it's such a time suck, but it doesn't have to be. Gusto is how small business owners get back time when every hour counts. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use. So you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. Automatic payroll filing , simple direct deposits, health benefits, commuter benefits, workers comp 401k, you name it, gusto can take care of it and make it simple for all your employees to use. Try gusto today at gusto.com slash articles and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com/slash articles. One more time. Gusto.com/slash articles. Think of the beautiful artisanally crazy Or your mortgage. Your rent or your mortgage is probably your biggest monthly expense, and it's a drag. It stings every month, but it can feel a little bit better with Bilt. Bilt is a program that lets you earn points on your rent or your mortgage. Every housing payment earns you points and you can use them towards flights on United or stays at Hyatt, lift rides, Amazon purchases, and you can redeem rewards at over 45,000 merchant partners all around your neighborhood. I love redeeming my built points for lifts. I can't believe how many cabs I get to use now. It's luxurious. Being a renter or owning a home is better with built. Join the membership for where you live at joinbuilt.com slash articles. That's J O I N B I L T dot com slas h articles. Make sure to use that URL so they know I sent you. This is ninety-nine percent invisible. I'm Roman Mars . If you hear these footsteps, you can get some idea about who is walking towards you. She could be a supermodel, a CEO, a drag queen, a bridesmaid, just to name a few. As a fashion object and symbol, the high heel is weighted with meaning. It is also weighted with the wearer's entire body weight. The high heeled shoe might be one of the only designs that is physically painful and yet somehow persists. Avery Truffelman doesn't tend to wear heels. I really like the way heels look, and I've tried wearing them, but I just cannot do it. So I talked to someone who actually wears them every day. And I have a standing desk. So I'm even a bigger dummy, right? Like I'm in these heels all day and standing. And when Audi does her job, you can't even tell she's This is all things considered from NPR News. I'm Audie Cornish. Believe it or not, we radio folk actually bother to get dressed . Sometimes. For Audi Cornish, like a lot of professionals, high heels are strictly for the office. Commuting to work, it's flats. After work, back in flats. Because it is impossible, I feel like, to find a shoe that is a high heel that's really gorgeous and fundamentally comfortable. She's tried high heels that claim to use comfort technology. But it's like a three and a half inch, four inch pump. Like it's only gonna be so comfortable. They're shoes that are wearable, and I can wear them for hours. But I wouldn't call it comfortable. Right? It's just it's just possible. And she does not like to complain. You do it to yourself, right? So it's t it's dumb to walk around being like these heels hurt. Because that's basically like saying, I failed at this look . But people have been failing at this look for a very long time. I can't tell um when the heel was actually invented. I think that history is long buried and dates back centuries and centuries and centuries in the Near East. Elizabeth Semmelhack curates a very specialized museum in Toronto. I'm Elizabeth Sumelhack and I'm the senior curator at the Batashi Museum. I've gotta ask, why isn't it the Shuseum? Uh I don't know. You were the first to ask me that question. The collection at the Batachou Museum, or shoe , includes a lot of different kinds of footwear, but high heels are the focus of Elizabeth Samo ac's research and the subject of her book Heights of Fashion, a History of the Elevated Shoe. And that history, as it turns out, started with men. Many horseback riding cultures wore heels on their boots and on their shoes for riding. Heels help you stay in the stirrups, which is why cowboy boots have heels. As early as the 10th century, the Persian cavalry was wearing inch-high high heels. And Persia had a really big, really talented, mounted military. So this spread the trend. And so European men have heels added to their riding boots. It's associated with upper class practice, because having horses, keeping horses, you know, it's like having a sports car. And so it seems that from there men wore it first, then within short order, upper class women added heels to their own outfits and then um heels become a form of upper and middle class dress throughout the seventeenth century. But it really wasn't yet a strong signifier of gender. In all those paintings of Louis XIV and his little kitten heels, he's dressing like the pillar of normative aristocratic masculinity he is. Nothing effeminate about him. At the time. But then heels started to get gendered in their designs. Men's heels grew broad and sturdy, and women's became tapered and decorative. Finally men, deemed them impractical, and in the 18th century, the high heel is strictly a lady shoe. And something really interesting happens at the end of the 18th century, which is the French Revolution. And when the French Revolution happened , high heels, although they were very much associated with femininity, they were also very much associated with aristocratic femininity. Are out of vogue. And then he'll stay out of style for a really, really long time. Until, and this is Semmelhack's theory, the invention of the camera. Because with photography came pornography, and with the rise of pornography came the rise of the heel. Pornography embraced high thin heels before fashion dead because heels work great when you don't have to move and you're just posing for a few minutes. It's around this time when heels become sex charged. The pinu ps that are in men's barracks during World War II almost always have high heels on them. When the war is over and the men return home, that is when the stiletto is invented, because the stiletto brings fashion into alignment with men's erotica. As heels made their way out of photography and onto the street and into the office, there arose the engineering challenge of trying to make this fundamentally uncomfortable thing comfortable. I think the physics of putting the weight of a woman's body basically on the balls of her feet is you know, that's a lot of pressure to try to mitigate. So people try to find ways around the design. There are foldable flat shoes that you can take with you and you just can't take the pain of a high heel anymore. But if you want to go the whole nine yards or nine hours in pumps, YouTube is full of hacks and tips and tricks. Put the heel liner in and it will prevent your shoe from like flopping off, you know what I mean? MacGyver type fixes for the shoe. All you need is felt and a glue stick and some glue and some scissors and a glue gun. Remember guys do not burn yourself. MacGyver type fixes for the foot. All you have to do is tape together your third and your fourth toe. I promise this works. Classes and tutorials for learning how to walk in heels. Practice, practice, practice. And I don't want you girls to be afraid about going up and down the stairs in heels. It's actually fairly easy. In the most extreme cases, people have gotten surgeries to shorten their pinky toes, deaden their nerves, or shoot Botox into their feet, all to circumvent the pain of the high heel . You start to feel it at the very bottom of your foot. The ball of your foot has all the nerves. And then it'll start to rub your heels and rub on the sides Meet the twins. I'm Emily Liang. I'm three minutes older. I'm Jessica Leung. We have a vintage inspired modern comfort wedding shoeline. So that people who are getting married don't have numb feet or aching legs or crooked posture or nerve damage. Because it's not just your foot pain. It's your it's your ankle pain. It's it shortens your calves, it ruins your posture. Do not click image search. Some things you just can't unsee. The Leong twins designed hacks into the shoe and borrowed elements from other kinds of footwear. When we actually first started, we frankensteined the most comfortable aspects of different shoes. They started with the toe box, which is basically the very front of the shoe where the toes are. They took the toe box from a salsa dancer's high heel, which tends to be roomier. Just to give your foot enough room to be able to swell as you're standing, every foot will swell throughout the day. The whole shoe is really padded and cushioned and like running shoes, they have arch support built right in. They're not stilettos. For balance purposes, the Leong's made the heel thick where it meets the foot, but for aesthetics, the sturdy heel tapers to a finer point where it meets the floor. You don't want to look at this shoe and think it's a comfort shoe. Although comfort shoe is relative. We guarantee our shoes are gonna be at least an hour more comfortable than all your other shoes. For the Liang twins, even the most comfortable high heels still have a time limit. But Martha Davis begs to differ. I don't have that same feeling. I feel I wear these shoes twelve hours a day, every day, and and I know quite a few women who do the same and I have never had any problems with them. Although Martha Davis is talking about shoes that she made. My name is Martha Davis and I'm an industrial designer and I've been working in the footwear industry for the last eight years. You may be familiar with her industrial design work. Martha Davis designed the round, compact case for the pill. Like the Leong twins, Davis was wearing high heels before she started designing them, and she couldn't find a high heeled shoe that looked good and didn't cause pain. Davis went to Milan to study a process of shoemaking called the Lunati method, which emphasizes measurement and proportionality. And her takeaway is this. A heel can be really successful as long as the shoe fits properly. So it's not a question of the height, it's a question of the fit. And there's one critical point where the fit really matters. And it's called the calzata? Calzata? Calzata. They call it the fitting point. That's the number one critical spot. If you look down at your feet, it's kind of right before your foot becomes your toes. So in terms of girth, it's the widest part of your foot. You have to secure that Number of factors, but it's most important to keep the calzata in proportion to the other numbers for comfort and security. Though she keeps her shoes relatively low. But a quote unquote low heel is nothing to scoff at. I wore around three inch heels this week just to try it, and my feet are killing me. So why bother? Uh well it's complicated. I asked Audie Cornish this question too. The same twinge that makes me feel awkward about discussing high heels is the same thing that makes me think like, why do I shave my legs? You know what I mean? It's like my whole feminism 101 collegiate self like railing at me from the past, being like, you've sold out in every way possi ble uh but there is something to be said for a well-made high heel shoe that kind of makes your calves look amazing and puts that like inappropriate probably sexy arch in your back. I like that feeling. The heel is so tied up in webs of gender and sex and power. Look, I can't speak for everyone, but when it comes to the appeal of the heel, it's actually not very complex psychology. Heels affect the way you move through the world. They change your walk. They make you push your shoulders back, hold your head up, and swing your hips. They make you taller. But it's not really about that. I mean, I'm already pretty tall. Actually, in general, height is not as big a factor as you would think. People will often say to me, Well, women wear high heels today because they want to be as tall as men. Elizabeth Similhac again. I counter with that and I say I I do understand that reasoning, but there are many, many, many men who would equally benefit from increased height. And so why are they ignoring the potential power of the high heel? But it wasn't too long ago when heels for guys were kind of cool. Think of the opening scene of Saturday Night Fever. John Travolta is walking through the streets of New York and he's Men tried high heels in the seventies, and why didn't it stick? To condense Elizabeth Semmelheck's research, men's heels in the 70s were too tied up in subculture. The exoticizing elements kept it on the fringe. And so the men's chunky platform went out of style when power dressing of the nineteen eighties came along. Men were in suits and ties, women were in suits and heels, and they still are. simply professional power, or it could come to be that female professionals are the new power brokers. But then I would not be surprised if that happens that men will be as eager to wear high heels as women. Okay. But only if they can design comfortable ones. Cute, right? It's funny to listen back to, especially because so much has changed in the last dozen years. Like for everybody in the world in profound ways. Including, of course, Audie Cornish. So do you remember when we talked about high heels? I did, but I did not remember the details of the discussion. So I actually went back and listened to the episode and I was definitely like, do I still wear heels? After the break . When you think of New York City style. What do you think of ? I mean, you can think of any number of movies or TV shows, and I bet those movies or TV shows that you're thinking of were costume designed by none other than Molly Rogers. Molly is an Emmy -winning costume designer behind some of the most iconic fashion-forward New York TV shows and movies of the last decades. And now she's distilled all of her fashion philosophies into one distinct collection where you can dress like the stars of some of your favorite New York fashion fantasies. Molly has created fun, unique pieces that will make you look like you have your own personal costume designer. It's one of those fashion collaborations where the pieces all feel really unique, like you're finding something special that nobody else has. And they're only available at Macy's. It's a quintessential New York store for a quintessential New York designer. Get the look. Shop Macy's online or in store today . Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions pulling details about you from public records and the internet , then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls, and why ads seem to f ollow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app you get a VPN, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to five million dollars in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24-7 US-based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or just a VPN. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at aura.com slash safer. Protect yourself now at aura dot com slash safer . I still think I see people grav itating towards a heel when the situation calls for it. They just may wear a lower heel. I still wear them even though even on air on TV now. And when you say you do TV, where do you do TV? What are you doing? Oh, sorry. Yes. I am now. My name is Audie Cornish. I am anchor of CNN This morning, morning news show, weekdays at 6 a.m. Eastern. And soon to be video podcast with my old friend Ari Shapiro. It's gonna be called Engagement Party. I'm so excited. That's gonna be great. I'm excited too. So well, it's interesting that you still had to sit for a second and be like, wait, do I wear heels? Like it wasn't an immediate knee-jerk answer. I mean, how do you think your attitude has changed in the ensuing years? I think the difference is, you know, I'm very much about the costume does affect who you are in the moment and in the world, right? Maybe 10 or 15 years ago when I was covering Congress, I actually wore heels in the hallways of Congress to cover lawmakers. It really felt like you had to look Then when I went to NPR, I think I still did it because I was trying to be an anchor and I still felt like a little baby reporter. And I was trying to compensate for the fact that I felt not ready for the job that I was in. Now I'm coming into this job into TV. I don't feel like that. I don't feel like an ingenue. Like I'm coming pretty fully formed. I'm definitely playing with height more, you know, like before I'd be like kitten heel who like why would you do that and like now I do have mix it up with heights I really do think in terms of message it's like who am I talking to what are their expectations certain kinds of heels they,'re over