This document discusses the evolution of women's footwear over thousands of years, from early leather sandals to modern athletic shoes. It outlines how shoes have historically served as markers of social status and how styles like high heels originated and changed in popularity over different time periods and cultures. The document then analyzes the history and changing trends of high heels and women's footwear styles from ancient times through the 20th century to today's 21st century options.

1. EVOLUTION OF WOMEN
FOOTWEAR
By:bisman and gurarpan

2. INTRODUCTION
• Spanish cave drawings from more than 15,000 years
ago show humans with animal skins or furs
wrapped around their feet. The body of a well-
preserved “ice-man” nearly 5,000 years old wears
leather foot coverings stuffed with straw. Shoes, in
some form or another, have been around for a very
long time. The evolution of foot coverings, from
the sandal to present-day athletic shoes that are
marvels of engineering, continues even today as we
find new materials with which to cover our feet.

3. • Shoes in general have typically served as
markers of gender, class, race, and ethnicity
• No other shoe, however, has gestured toward
leisure, sexuality, and sophistication as much
as the high-heeled shoe
• our shoe fashions of today are, for the most
part, modernised adaptations of past styles

4. HISTORY
• During ancient Egypt time shoes were only
worn by higher classes.
• In ancient Greece and Rome, platform sandals
called kothorni, later known as buskinsin the
Renaissance were popular.
• 1400s, chopines, or platform shoes, were created in
Turkey and were popular throughout Europe until the
mid-1600s
• in the mid 1500s after Catherine de Medici made The
simple riding heel made them than more fashionable
functional.

5. Formal Invention of High Heels as
Fashion
• The formal invention of high heels as fashion is
typically attributed to the rather short-statured
Catherine de Medici (1519-1589)
• to dazzle the French nation and compensate for her
perceived lack of aesthetic appeal, she donned
heels two inches high
• Her heels were a wild success and soon high heels
were associated with privilege.

6. •In the early 1700s, France's King Louis XIV (The Sun
King) would often wear intricate heels decorated with
miniature battle scenes. Called “Louis heels,” they
were often as tall as five inches.
•French Revolution and the Revolt against High Heels
in 1791.
•In the 1860s, heels as fashion became popular
again, and the invention of the sewing machine
allowed greater variety in high heels

7. Twentieth century
• While high heels enjoyed widespread popularity in
the late nineteenth century, early twentieth-
century women demanded more comfortable, flat-
soled shoes.
• The Depression during the 1930s influenced
Western shoe fashion as heels became lower and
wider.
• In the 1940s, luxury items were in short supply due
to WWII

8. •The revival of Western high fashion in the post-war
1950s was led by French designer Christian Dior and
his collaboration with shoe designer Roger Vivier.
•With the creation of the miniskirt in the early
1960s, stilettos were attached to boots
•Platform shoes became immensely popular in the
1970s
•feminists in the 1980s, argued that fashion can be
an experiment with appearances, an experiment that
challenges cultural meaning.
•early 1990s new designers started to rethink high
heels

10. Today's 21st century
• Women in the 21st century have more shoe choices
than ever before
• There is a large variety of shoes available for
women, in addition to most of the men's styles
being more accepted as unisex. Some broad
categories are:
1. High-heeled footwear
2. Sneaker boot
3. Mules etc.