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Growing up as a teenager in the late 1980s, the most iconic image of sexiness in high heels was undoubtedly provided by the photographs of Helmut Newton. Tall, powerful and sexy were combined in these images of strong women in high heels. One such image is a self-portrait from 1981, taken in Paris. Newton presents himself with his eye to the camera, seen in a mirror that lets us to see the back and front of a naked model. To the side, Newton's wife, photographer Alice Springs, looks on, sat in a canvas chair, while at the centre of the image another pair of naked legs appears, and on the top left an open curtain offers a glimpse of Parisian traffic on the street outside. Two pairs of heels worn by models are visible in the picture. One pair seen from the front, elongates the legs and arches the small of the back of the model we see in full length, both from the back and from the front in the reflection of the mirror. The other pair, sky high stilettos, is seen from the side on a model who is - save for her legs and tensed calves - obliterated from our view.

Worn by these otherwise naked models, the pumps appear an almost natural appendage: they define the Newton woman and her sculptural body: they are both a pedestal on which the woman stands and an extension of her body, yet this naturalness is contrasted with Newton himself, firmly standing on his white trainers and the portrait of his wife, clad in more sensible boots. The different bodies, seen from the rear, the side, the front, and the different gazes and frames that compose the image render its reading complex. Yet what holds particular interest for me is the staging of the stilettos, and the role they play in defining Newton's aesthetic, and beyond that, the cultural markers this image ticks: gender, fetishism, sexiness and beauty**. **

Today's high heel footwear originates from shoes that were elevated thanks to platforms. Worn by both men and women of the higher classes until the middle of the eighteenth century, the high heel has a long history that shows a constant exchange between Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. One of the earliest representations of high heels is found on Ancient Egyptian murals: the Egyptian nobility put on high heels for religious purposes to differentiate themselves from the common folk, who went barefoot.

In ancient Greece the use and significance of high heels, _kothorni _or buskins, shoes with wooden cork soles, changed: actors still used them to imitate higher social classes. The platform beneath the foot, literarily elevating a human person, became a signifier, an unnatural attribute, and would represent a high social status. In Ancient Rome the use of platforms became more of a practical than a performative act: sex workers wore this elevated footwear to have a more conspicuous appearance. In the Middle Ages however, the use of wooden pattens, attached to the soles of delicate footwear, had the practical bonus of keeping your feet clean in muddy streets.

A gender-orientated development in the use of elevated shoes took place in the fifteenth century: chopines, a new kind of platform shoe worn by noblewomen, arrived in Europe via the Byzantine Empire and Spain. This footwear, in the beginning of its appearance still used as practical overshoes, changed over time into a luxurious product, made of silk (damask), velvet, soft, tooled leather, often highly aestheticised with gold laces, embroidery and decorative leatherwork. Platform shoes became once again an aristocratic as well as an aesthetic signifier, representing wealth and nobility, although now only restricted to ladies. The practical, unisex _pattens, _was replaced by chopines, worn by aristocratic women and courtesans only in order to underline gender and social class.

When examining the portrait of Louis XIV of France (1638-1738) painted by Hyacinthe Rigaud in 1701, one cannot ignore the shoes that le Roi-Soleil is wearing. A pair of bright red, rather flashy high heels is visible beneath his fleur-de-lys coronation mantle. Similar to the pair of high heels worn by the naked models photographed by Newton in 1981, the elongated heels of Louis' footwear function as a pedestal, providing the king of France with a height that underscores his authority. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century aristocrats wore high heels to express their wealth and politically privileged status. Soon complex etiquettes - sets of rules regarding the colour scheme of elongated footwear - transformed high heels into a code of behaviour demarcating social behaviour and class categorisation. Those who had the privilege to enter the court at Versailles were allowed to wear those red soled shoes, similar to those worn by Louis XIV in the 1701 Rigaud portrait.

To understand how the Renaissance chopine evolved into Louis XIV's red heels, two sixteenth-century figures need to be introduced: Catherine de' Medici (1547-1559) and Abbas I of Persia (1571-1629) the fifth Shah of Persia. The latter sent Persian diplomats to Germany, Spain and Russia in an attempt to ensure stability on the Western border regions of his empire. Their arrival triggered and inspired new fashions that had also a practical purpose: The heels of their shoes, high enough to fit into stirrups, made horseback riding safer and more stable.

As for Catherine de' Medici, the story goes that she had a special pair of shoes boasting a heel made for her to impress the French court as she was about to marry Henry II, Duke of Orléans, (who was at the time involved with one of the greatest beauties of his time: Diane de Poitiers) De' Medici, who used high heels to boost her rather plain looks and small height, even though her shoes were partly concealed under long dresses.

These two anecdotes show how the European tradition of wearing high-heeled footwear is the synthesis of both masculine and feminine costume histories, and how enduring fashion codes are, even as they transform themselves: Hence Louis XIV red heels are taken up quickly across Europe, for instance by the English King Charles II (1630-1685) before it is, twenty-five years later institutionalised as a sign of access to Versailles by Louis XIV, and a few centuries later adopted by Christian Louboutin to become, momentarily, a means of recognising the fashionista.

Visually analysing the shoes of Charles II and Louis XIV it becomes clear how the elevated heel, from the moment De' Medici put them on, gradually became a fashionable item: the shoes are, unquestionably decorative and become an aesthetic object as much as a practical one. From about 1675, high-heeled Baroque and Rococo slippers, pantouffles, are decorated with exquisitely embroidered fabric, symbolising the high social status of those that could afford and wear them.

The craze for wearing fashionable high-heeled footwear waned when the French Revolution set in: the decorative, unpractical shoes were associated with opulence and aristocracy, with which no one wanted to be associated in the light of revolutionary, democratising tendencies holding sway in Europe and the newly independent United States of America.

The gender-neutral and aristocratic aura of the pump was lost during and after the French Revolution, for instance during the Empire where a form of ballet shoe prevails. It comes back into fashion again in the second half of the nineteenth century, this time associated with an underlying fetishism and ethnocentric thinking: it emphasizes the high instep arch of white female feet, and as erotic imagery begins to circulate, it acquires an aura of eroticism.

Working with Christian Dior (1905-1957), Roger Vivier (1913-1998) takes credit for developing, in the early 1950s, the elongated, pointy heel that defines the modern stiletto (named after a thin Italian dagger). The Stiletto blows up the semiotics of femininity and sensuality: its height and thin heel dramatically affect the stance, forcing a woman to stand on her tiptoes, clench her calves and thrust her chest forward in order to achieve balance. Although rather hazardous for the body and its environment (think of all those places where they are banned or un-wearable: from antique wooden floors to the natural beauty sitesl) stilettos are seen as sexy and glamorous, echoing the collective image of the _femme fatale _conveyed in the cinema everywhere from Marlene Dietrich in the Blue Angel to 1940s Hollywood film noir. It is also a paradoxical item within the fashion of this era: a sexy item worn with the decent and elegant long skirts of Dior's New Look (1947), which also re-introduced corsets in women's costumes. Such emphasis on a sculptural feminine silhouette, shows the role played by the stiletto (here helped by the corset) in constructing a somewhat definitive feminine allure for decades to come.

In the 1960s and 1970s, characterized by radical ideas and experimentation, are the moment the gender-static notion of the high heel designed for the chic, bourgeois women of 1950s is overturned : platform heels return, (with a distant echo from the Renaissance chopines and medieval pattens) worn by both men and women. Shoes contribute to the visual identity more strongly than before.

With an ethos of "dress-to-shock" both men and women buy and thus stimulate a market for more experimental, radical high-heeled, and very individualised footwear, in line with the consumerist, liberal, and individualized culture of the late capitalist Western world. In the past four decades, high heels have become ubiquitous, their popularity driven by a propelling exchange between young, fashionable forerunners, professional fashion designers and a strongly integrated pop culture. Experimental brands such as United Nude work together with architects and designers such as Zaha Hadid, Iris van Herpen and Ben van Berkel amongst others. They investigate innovate designs, materials and techniques (3D-printing for example) beyond archetypical forms, creating pumps that are more and more becoming artistic sculptural and architectural forms, pushing the limits of functionality, wearability and traditions.

Several cultural signs suggest a relative departure from the exclusively feminine and sexy connotation of the stiletto. In (performance) art, theatre as well as in the clubbing scene wearing high heels already had become a feature of men as well as women's style, following the legacy of the hybridized platform shoe of the 1970s (see David Bowie on stage) -

"There is no reason", Semmelhack believes, "the high heel cannot continue to be ascribed new meanings - although we may have to wait for true gender equality first. If it becomes a signifier of actual power, then men will be as willing to wear it as women".

Taking the current and popular gender bending trend in street fashion, and thinking fashion designers who use androgynous models on the catwalk into consideration, it would appear that there is definitely a way back for men on heels. Acne Studios' 2015 women's fashion campaign even shows an 11-years old boy wearing high heels and a handbag, taking the gender blurring game to higher level.

In her dance pieces, Pina Bausch, who introduced the pump to contemporary dance, worked with gender identity issues as social commentary and philosophical thoughts on modern society. Her semiotic use of cross-dressing, such as women dancing in men suits, or men dancing on high heels, represents the construction of the heel as an oppressing construction made by the male sex to dominate women.

Following Roland Barthes analysis of what he called contemporary _Mythologies, _ analysing the presence and resurgence of high heels in popular culture shows throughout an anti-feminist streak: Byzantine and Asian concubines were obliged to wear these highly uncomfortable chopines, in order to diminish their mobility and when European women began wearing these shoes, they were urged to be supported by servants or men when taking a stroll through the city: northern European Grand Tour visitors of Venice often mentioned the chopines in travel guides and diaries,

"invented by husbands who hoped the cumbersome movement [that] entailed would me illicit liaisons difficult".

This decrease of mobility is associated with the male domination over women - either part of a harem as concubine or married to a man and thus imprisoned as housewife - by mostly feminist and critical, mostly feminine authors. This practice is for example, according to feminist scholar and political activist Sheila Jeffreys, connected to Chinese foot binding, a 1000-year-old tradition: "& what those who record and delight in foot fetishism also show are the considerable similarities between this practice and the wearing of high heels in the west". The imperial Chinese practice of binding all toes back onto the sole, to bend the arch of the foot down except the big toe by strips of cloth. In contemporary culture, the sensual vulnerability and awkward immobility of women wearing high fashion pumps, is well shown in Barcelona collective _Kinopravda_'s _Twun _(2015):

" A poppy, pratfall-imbued meditation on how it feels to contend with staying upright in the highest of high heels",

a video work that gives plenty of food for thought.

Sophie Berrebi, with Max Bouwhuis.

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