Short History of The Wedge Heel Shoe for Ladies

The wedge shoe shoe for women made its debut in the world of style in 1938. It was originally designed and made by the Italian shoe designer, Salvatore Ferragamo, that became well-known for his visionary and classic designs in women’s shoes. Farragamo gained his reputation for a boot and shoe designer in the film industry in the 1920’s. Because of his innovative designs and the quality of his shoes, he had been commissioned by both female and male film stars to make shoes for both on-screen performances and personal usage. Due to the prevalence of his shoes in Hollywood, he became known as”Shoemaker to the Stars”.

Although his shoes were popular amongst the hollywood elite, they weren’t comfortable. To solve this issue, he enrolled in the Los Angeles University to pursue studies in human anatomy, math and chemical engineering. He implemented his studies to the style of his sneakers and broke away from the way shoes were traditionally made and designed, and began making his sneakers, equally innovative in style and comfortable to wear. The prevalence of his shoes expanded internationally, but the overwhelming need for his sneakers along with the inability to meet that demand without the aid of qualified employees, compelled him to returned to Italy. Upon finding qualified personnel in Florence, among the centres of the Italian shoe industry, he started a store of his own and began to enlarge the creation of his sneakers https://totshoes.com .

From the late 1930’s, a lack of leather and rubber, traditional materials used in shoe manufacturing, developed on account of the war. Ferragamo started experimenting with non-tradition materials such as straw, felt, cork and timber and integrate them in designing his new shoes. As a result of his experimenting with these non-traditional materials, he made his most noted layouts, the wedge and cage heel shoe. He produced the wedge heel with wood or cork as the platform support of the shoe. The cork platform became the most popular due to its lightness in weight and endurance. Women, of his era, found the wedge heel much easier to walk in than sneakers with a narrower heel and bought this style of shoe, but not just for its design but also for its support of the foot and the comfort it afforded in walking. Within 2 decades of its introduction into the world of fashion, the wedge heel became a classic and popular design in women’s shoes internationally.

His first design of the wedge heels made no distinction between the heel and the remaining portion of the shoe, but for the back along with the instep of the foot being raised over the foot of the shoe. It offered a triangular platform on which the food rested that extended from the head of the foot into the middle or the front of the foot. Now the original design of both his stage and regular wedge heel shoe have evolved into a defined heel on several fashions, cut out platforms, straps and strapless shoes, with diverse ornamentation. The wedge heel today offers more variety in colors and materials in is constructed of heels ranging from 1 inch to over 4 inches in height. Shoe sizes today run the gamut of small to extra large and women of different prestige and walks of life wear this timeless style of platform shoe to both style and comfort