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"Although Europeans were first attracted to
heels because the Persian connection gave them a macho air, a craze in
women's fashion for adopting elements of men's dress meant their use
soon spread to women and children.
"In the 1630s you had women cutting their hair, adding epaulettes to their outfits," says Semmelhack. "They would smoke pipes, they would wear hats that were very masculine. And this is why women adopted the heel - it was in an effort to masculinise their outfits.
"... the Enlightenment brought with it a new respect for the rational and useful and an emphasis on education rather than privilege. Men's fashion shifted towards more practical clothing. In England, aristocrats began to wear simplified clothes that were linked to their work managing country estates. It was the beginning of what has been called the Great Male Renunciation, which would see men abandon the wearing of jewellery, bright colours and ostentatious fabrics in favour of a dark, more sober, and homogenous look.
"Women, in contrast, were seen as emotional, sentimental and uneducatable. Female desirability begins to be constructed in terms of irrational fashion and the high heel - once separated from its original function of horseback riding - becomes a primary example of impractical dress."
"High heels were seen as foolish and effeminate. By 1740 men had stopped wearing them altogether. But it was only 50 years before they disappeared from women's feet too, falling out of favour after the French Revolution.
By the time the heel came back into fashion, in the mid-19th Century, photography was transforming the way that fashions - and the female self-image - were constructed.
Pornographers were amongst the first to embrace the new technology, taking pictures of naked women for dirty postcards, positioning models in poses that resembled classical nudes, but wearing modern-day high heels.
Elizabeth Semmelhack believes that this association with pornography led to high heels being seen an erotic adornment for women."
" ...the era of men walking around on their toes seems to be behind us. Could we ever return to an era of guys squeezing their big hairy feet into four-inch, shiny, brightly coloured high heels?
"Absolutely," says Semmelhack. There is no reason, she believes, why 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."