You may have seen articles or videos making the rounds on this topic recently such as ModernGurlz "how the economy affects the height of high heels" and if you looked at them you may have also noticed they really don't give much supporting research. Rather than take IBM at their word I decided to dig into whether the economic drops really do cause heel height to raise! Examples are EVERYWHERE if we just look at advertisements, articles, and originals from the 20th century. And the answer? Well, it's not so simple as they'd like to say it is.

High heels go up and down throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, constantly fluctuating to accommodate activities and careers, fashion and silhouette, and even technical achievements (we can only go so high before we need metal rods in our heels). Women in the 1910s and 1940s needed practical shoes for wartime work, as did women entering the office world in the 1980s. But that doesn't mean we saw only low heeled shoes during those times! Fashion is constantly fluctuating and the overall silhouette, hem height, and aesthetic greatly affect the popular shoe styles.

In reality, the 1920s didn't have only short heels. The short "flapper" heel (even they used this term) was not commonly worn by all women and was only around for a couple of years. The height gradually rose throughout the decade and into the 1930s. Changes in heel shape meant that the higher heels looked even taller. At the beginning of the 1940s heels could often reach around 3" or more, but they were a stable, thicker heel shape. It wasn't until the 1950s that the heel thinned out to become the stiletto heel we know today. The height then began to drop as we transitioned to the 1960s and low, square heels became the popular mode. The 1970s had the return of the platform from the 1940s, but with much higher extremes. However, most women were wearing a variety of heel heights, clogs, and other practical styles during this time. They transitioned into the practical heel of the 1980s business woman, which began to rise in the 1990s. By the turn of the century, both high stiletto heels and platform shoes had returned. But does any of this actually match with economic turns?

Socials
Instagram:   / silk_and_buckram  
Tiktok:   / cloche_call  
Patreon:   / nicolerudolph  

Sources:
IBM: https://www03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pr...
Insook Ahn Study: http://koreascience.or.kr/article/JAK...
Summary (in English): https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewco...
US Recessions: https://mytradingskills.com/whatisr...
Global Recessions: https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/...
1914 Shop: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/i...
Bank Failure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ba...
1922 Shoe & Leather Reporter: https://www.google.com/books/edition/...
1920 Article Clip: https://www.google.com/books/edition/...
Eaton's Catalogue: https://archive.org/details/eatonscat...
1918 Sears, Roebuck & Co: https://archive.org/details/catalog19...
1922 Sears, Roebuck & Co: https://archive.org/details/SearsRoeb...
Nick DeWolf: https://nickdewolfarchive.tumblr.com/...
All other Sears, Roebuck & Co: https://christmas.musetechnical.com/

Music via Epidemic Sound (https://www.epidemicsound.com)