During the Elizabethan period, Europe saw a revolution. Things would never be the same. Life was altered. Without the changes, Vogue would never have been possible, and Carrie Bradshaw would have had to use her oven for an oven instead of shoe storage.
The revolution, my friends, is… the heeled shoe.
Medieval shoes were sewn together, and then turned inside out so that the stitching was on the inside. This meant the leather had to be soft, and pliable, in order to be easy to work with. There couldn’t be much to them. But then, around 1500, a small step for man, but a giant leap for shoe lovers everywhere came into being. The welt. The small strip of leather (or plastic these days) that runs along the perimeter of a shoe, in between the base of the shoe, and the sole. Shoes could become much more sturdy, and you could add things on that couldn’t have been added before.
Things like… heels. By the middle of the century, people in Italy were adding arched heels, with leather wrapped around a wooden block, and the whole shebang glued to the sole.
Enter, the pantoble. Or Chopine, if you were in Italy (where they originated).
The pantoble came in a variety of price points and styles, and they’re sort of like platform shoes, but way crazier. They would not only keep you out of the mud on the street, but also make you taller, and were a status object. And that ticked off the puritans, who, when they weren’t busy trying to get the theaters outlawed, enjoyed writing pamphlets lambasting new Elizabethan fashions.
Phillip Stubbes, one of those noisy Puritans, wrote the Anatomie of Abuses, 1583, railing on about everything from fornication to ruffs (and they were equally bad in his view) wrote about the new shoes:
To these their nether-stocks, they have corked shooes, pincnets, and fine pantofles, which bear them up a finger or two inches or more from the ground; wherof some be of white leather, some of black, and some of red, some of black velvet, some of white, some of red, some of green, raced, carved, cut and stitched all over with silk, and laid on with golde, silver, and such like: yet, notwithstanding, to what good uses serve these pantofles, except it be to wear in a private house, or in a man’s chamber to keepe him warme? … but to go abroad in them, as they are now used al together, is rather a let or hinderance to a man then otherwise; for shall he not be faine to knock and spurn at every stone, wall or post to keep them on his feet? Wherfore, to disclose even the bowels of my judgement unto you, I think they be rather worne abrode for nicenes, then either for any ease which they bring (for the contrary is moste true), or for any handsomnes which is in them. For how should they be easie, when a man can not goe steadfastly in them, without slipping and sliding at every pace ready to fall doune: Againe how should they be easie where as the heele hangeth an inch or two over the slipper on the ground? Insomuch as I have knowen divers mens legs swel with the same. And handsome how should they be, when as with their flipping and flapping up and down in the dirte they exaggerate a mountain of mire, & gather a heape of clay & baggage together, loding the wearer with importable burthen, casting up mire to the knees of the wearer.
Stubbes’ Anatomie of Abuses
The Italian dance teacher Fabritio Caroso suggested that, rather than actually lifting your feet that much, so they would slide off, it would be better for you to walk by, sort of, sliding along. Much easier to do indoors than outside on uneven ground, stones, and mud.
Sometimes you have to suffer for fashion, no?
What do you think? Would you wear these beauties outside?
Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.
She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
