In 2018 the Washington Post dramatically asserted that “Across the country, women are trading in their high-heeled stilettos for sneakers and ballet flats.”
The following year, the question was being posed in England when the BBC asked “is it the end for high heels?”
And then the pandemic hit. Comfortable flats surged further in popularity as those fortunate enough to work from home often embraced sweat pants, running shoes and sloppy joes as an alternative to more formal office wear.
So are high heels becoming less popular?
The short answer is yes.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, out went the power pumps and in came Ugg boots, fluffy slippers, Crocs, Birkenstocks and all manner of other horrors that wouldn’t ordinarily be seen dead on the corporate foot.
But while the pandemic supercharged the decline of heels, it didn’t start it. Well before the pandemic, heels were being worn less and less.
Right now, the best estimate is that only around 20% of women wear heels and only 10% of women wear high heels daily.
Having been wrongly blamed for causing everything from migraines to bunions, it is little wonder heel use has declined in recent years.
And as flat shoes become more socially acceptable, why wouldn’t women embrace their undeniably more practical advantages?
Another reason why daily heel-use has dropped off is that, more and more often, women are now thankfully not forced to wear them for work.
For example, as airlines relax their requirements that female cabin crew members wear heels, it may be thought that many such women would now wear flats to work. That doesn’t mean they’ve completely abandoned heels in their private lives however.
Yet it would be foolish to think that, just because heels are less popular now than they once were, that high heels will die out.
For one thing, high heels bring unique benefits that cannot be replicated by other shoes. Heels don’t just make women look good, they can make them feel good like no other shoe perhaps can.
Perhaps more importantly, the impact of the pandemic on heel-wearing seemed to us to be overstated.
Yes, women working from home abandoned high heels for more comfortable shoes. Did it really reflect anything more than the fact that people simply dressed for the new environment in which they found themselves?
Of course people weren’t going to wear office clothes if they weren’t in the office. Who would? Why would you dress to impress if there was nobody to impress?
On the back of the pandemic (indeed during it), opinion-writers were quick to pronounce the demise of the high heel for good.
The way was led with breathless headlines such as “the long overdue death of the high heel”, “how on earth did we ever wear heels” and so on.
We should question this logic.
To say that the death of heels is “overdue” or to question why they were ever worn is to suggest there has been some form of awakening that took the world a global pandemic to work out.
As if women could be so silly.
Just as people got back in the office eventually, even if not full time, so too have high heels emerged again. Sure, they are not as popular as they once were. But they’re not dead either.
So, yes, high heels are becoming less popular whichever way you look at it. But we think they’ll be around for a long time to come.