Block Heel

The block heel is the oldest heel in European dress, and for a long time it was the only one. When the raised heel arrived from Persia by way of the seventeenth-century cavalry, it came as a broad stacked column — a riding fitting, designed to lock the foot into a stirrup, that the courts of Europe promptly adopted as an ornament. Louis XIV had his lacquered scarlet, and restricted the privilege to those admitted at Versailles, which is how a functional piece of horsemanship became a talon rouge and a sign of rank.

Why the Width Matters

The mechanics are simple and decisive. Pressure is force divided by area, so a heel with a broad footprint spreads the wearer’s weight across a wide base and keeps the ankle stable through the step. A stiletto concentrates the same load onto a few square millimetres and asks the ankle to do the balancing. This is why the block heel can be worn at heights that would be punishing in any other form, and why it returns to favour whenever fashion turns towards walking.

The Stacked Heel

Construction is where quality shows. The best block heels are built from horizontal layers of sole leather, laminated, shaped and burnished until the strata are visible as fine parallel lines around the edge — a finish that cannot be imitated by a moulded unit, and that a good maker will leave deliberately exposed. Lesser versions are plastic or composite wrapped in a covering material, which is entirely respectable but rarely pretends otherwise. Wood, carved and finished, sits somewhere between the two.

Anyone advising clients on footwear should be able to read a heel at a glance. The edge of a stacked leather heel tells you more about a shoe’s price than the label inside it does.