Tales of the well-heeled

Stiletto by Mitchell Beazley.

This is one history book that makes for riveting reading. Stiletto by Caroline Cox traces the modern phenomenon of spike heels back to the late 1940s and early 1950s, although she mentions earlier examples.

With the invention of the Christian Dior's New Look silhouette of wasp waists and huge, full skirts, Parisian shoe designer Roger Vivier popularised the newly tapered heel shoes for Dior's radical post-war frippery. Women went mad for it and the Empress of Iran ordered 100 pairs of Vivier's shoes throughout the 1950s. Women were alleged to have amputated their little toes to get the perfect fit in the 50s. Naturally, movie stars helped to foster the fascination. Marilyn Monroe owes her famous walk to her Ferragamos. Jimmy Starr, former columnist on the Los Angeles Herald Express, claimed to know the secret: "She learned a trick of cutting a quarter of an inch off one heel so that when she walked, that little fanny would wriggle."

Cox puts stilettos into a cultural context calling them "a badge of rebellious liberation worn by an assertive modern woman; an overtly sexual emblem of woman as dominatrix; a shackling device to keep women both physically and mentally restrained; an object of desire enthusiastically embraced by Hollywood starlets; [and] an image vociferously reviled by radical feminists of the 1970s."

* Stiletto is $95, published by Mitchell Beazley.