Clear heels, which are also known as stripper shoes, are the best sexy footwear to make your legs look longer.
The best clear heels are comfortable as well as sexy. But the worst clear heels will look tacky and hurt your feet.
There are tons of reasons to wear clear heels. But above all, we want to make sure they fit well, feel comfortable and make us feel attractive whatever the occasion.
In a hurry? Here’s our top picks…
If you are looking to buy clear heels online, you can review our top picks below. Or read on for our essential guide to these amazingly versatile shoes.
Signal your intention with Steve Madden’s see-though mules
The big reasons why we love Steve Madden’s clear heels are their mainstream origins and proven design background.
A label like Steve Madden knows what it is about: reasonable quality at a reasonable price. Many women will have a pair or two of SM’s in their shoe closet already.
Signal is the absolute classic Cinderella slipper – a mule with one clear, PVC strap. But the real benefit of this mule is that, while its origins may be drawn from “stripper shoes”, this heel is downtown-appropriate and fashion forward as well.
This shoe slips on, slips off and should slip into any wardrobe as an all rounder on which any outfit can sit comfortably.
Remember your comfort in Cape Robbin’s Allure clear slider
Cape Robbins’ clear mules chalked up 1,000 reviews on Amazon in December 2021. Nearly 75% of them are five star reviews which means a lot of happy customers.
The reason why these clear heels are so popular is that they’re comfortable.
Unlike many clear mules which have a small strap, the Allure heels heels have a long top section which secures them firmly in place, distributing the shoe across the full foot.
This means they’re really easy to walk in and place less pressure on a concentrated area of the foot.
We love the black base which gives this heel a point of difference. However they’re also available in a nude base for those looking for a more conventional “stripper shoe” look.
Pleaser’s translucent platform sandals
Pleaser are the most famous brand of stripper shoes by far. They’ve been in business since 1993 and make literally hundreds of different high heeled shoes, but they specialise in stripper heels.
It just wouldn’t be right to not include a PVC heel from Pleaser in our recommendations. In this case, the shoes are branded “Fabulicious” which is a Pleaser label.
The Pleaser make is even recommended by Sarah Tressler in her Diary of an Angry Stripper. “There’s a reason Pleaser and all the other stripper shoemakers do so much business,” she once wrote in her now defunct blog. “A good stripper stiletto is the Nike of high heels.”
There’s a good reason to go with a Pleaser shoe if you’re in the market for a clear topped slide. You’re not going to be shelling out hundreds of dollars for your bedroom heels whichever brand you pick, so you might as well go for the top-of-the-line.
Another good reason to go with these shoes is that they have a platform on the front which means they are less steep and easier to walk in.
What is a clear heel?
The main feature of clear heels is a see-through strap or straps that hold the shoe to the foot. The heel of the stiletto may also be clear but this is not always the case.
This allows the foot to feature prominently in all its (hopefully pedicured) glory. For this reason clear heels are sometimes called “invisible shoes”.
What the point of clear heels?
The point of clear heels is to make your legs look amazing.
The straps of these shoes may be transparent but they are actually designed to play a clever trick.
Clear heels create an optical illusion that makes legs look longer than they really are. They look like they keep going and going and going, right down to the floor!
Beyond mind tricks, the allure of clear heels may simply be their simplicity: mules are always sexy and there is a certain confidence to a woman who can “bare all” on her feet.
What can clear heels be used for?
The backless mule style of clear heels have earned quite the reputation as a bedroom heel or stripper shoe.
But see through stilettos are not just bedroom shoes. They’re also worn as a prom shoe or for pole dancing.
Clear heels can also frequently be seen on contestants at body building, fitness competitions and other pageant events.
The recent pole dancing fitness craze also saw sales of see-through slides soar. The plastic top helps grip the pole.
Do clear heels really go with anything?
It’s frequently said that clear heels go with anything because they are neutral. This is basically correct – it is difficult to think of something that they would not go with.
A great feature of these shoes is that they work well with jeans for a casual look, but also with a dress for the “long legs forever” appeal.
Just about everything in between seems to work as well.
And despite all this, the clear heel remains popular for its original purpose as a stripper shoe: the illusion it creates of an elongated leg creates an instant appeal for onlookers!
How to fit stripper heels
When your Cinderella heels arrive you’ll obviously need to put them on.
You would not think instructions are necessary for sliding on a pair of clear plastic mules but there are a couple of tricks.
First, the straps may be really tight to begin with, sometimes too tight to get your feet into at all (they will stretch and mould to your feet over time).
One tip is to first try them on with stockings. This will make it much easier to slide into the shoes for the first few times you wear them.
Secondly, if stockings don’t work you can stretch the strap of the shoes by heating it gently with a hair drier. Once the strap is warm, put the shoe on (being careful not to burn yourself because that would be silly and it will hurt).
The straps should then mould to the shape and size of your feet.
Other tips you may hear for stretching clear heels include putting beans under the straps (they expand when exposed to air) and freezing them with bags of water under the straps (the water expands when it turns to ice).
We have never tried these and they sound messy and ridiculous. The hair drier works. Use the hair drier.
What are clear heels made out of?
The heels of stripper shoes are usually made from poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), a transparent thermoplastic sometimes called acrylic glass.
The substance is popularly known as lucite and stripper shoes are often called lucite heels for this reason.
The material used to make the clear upper of stripper heels is usually either polyvinyl chloride (PVC) or polyurethane.
What is the history of clear heels?
In her book Shoes: A Celebration of Pumps, Sandals, Slippers & More
author Linda O’Keeffe traced the origins of the modern clear heel to an “invisible sandal” created by Salvatore Ferragamo in 1947.
The Ferragamo heel used thin nylon threads to make a vamp and slingback. The concept was based on fishing line.
O’Keeffe also notes that in the 1950s, America’s “First Lady of shoe design” Beth Levine used a ruffled clear acrylic upper on a pair of flat sandals.
Following on from this, Levine produced the Cinderella heel shown above in 1961 (the image is from the book Beth Levine Shoes
).
Nina made a similar closed-in clear heel in the 1960s, and the clear mule style (often outlined with rhinestones) became commonplace that same decade.
O’Keeffe’s book has a picture of a single-strap clear heeled mule with a transparent wedge from Neiman Marcus in the 1960s. The rest was history.
Is it true that many top-end designers have made clear heels?
See-through heels have been on and off trend for many years now, and over that period a good number of famous designers have produced their versions of Cinderella shoes.
On this website we’ve covered attempts to incorporate PVC in shoes by designers such as Christian Louboutin, Nicholas Kirkwood, Oscar de la Renta and Stuart Weitzman to name but a few.
Celebrities in PVC heels
Celebrities have also been spotted in shoes which incorporate at least some PVC. Witness for example Hayley Atwell getting about in the Unbout Illusion pump from Christian Louboutin’s Spring / Summer 2012 collection.
In February 2013 Kim Kardashian instagrammed her set of not one but four different pairs of the Unbout Illusion see-through pumps! The picture was liked by 251,000 fans.
And in 2016, Kim’s husband Kanye West introduced the Yeezy stripper shoe. The heel was basically a knock-off of everything Pleaser has ever done but that didn’t stop fans paying many times the price for a pair.
Good luck in your search for the best clear heels.