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2012 happens to be the year I started wearing heels, but I never wore heels to a church service until 2013. At that time, I did have a very conservative pair of very plain looking, block heeled oxfords. I believe they had 3 1/2" heels. So evidently one could find heels that low in 2012, but they were somewhat unusual, or at least unusual in my memory! The small platform definitely tracks. Everything had a platform then. I have to laugh a bit at the rule, because evidently I've violated it every Sunday for years.

I’m not following your math. If you bought for 180, put 50 into it, and sold for 250 that’s only a 20k profit - or 10k a year.

This is so true and yet I find myself rather jaded. As many on here know, we buy and sell a lot of property. Not really flipping them, but in a way too... kind of. This last house though, to be closed on in two weeks, really did it for me. I bought it for $180,000, (154,000 Euro) put $50,000 (43,000 Euro) into it in just materials with me doing the carpentry work, and ended up selling it for $250,000 (215,000 euro). It took me 2 years to do, working at a full-time job, which is not bad, an additional $70,000 (60,000), or $35,000 (30,000 Euro) a year for what amounts to a part-time side-hustle. But it seems like a lot of work and effort for $35,000 (30,000 Euro) a year? With this new house, located on an island on a point of land where every window has an ocean view, we paid $116,000 (99,000 Euro). It needs a lot of work though, which I think will be around $40,000 (34,000 Euro). The insurance company tells me the replacement value for this house is $203,000 (174,000 Euro), so that is only a gain of $87,000 (75,000 Euro), assuming I can sell the rebuilt house for that much money. It is good to stay busy, and I like carpentry, but I am not so sure the numbers are really working. Maybe I am just getting old though and tired of building new kitchens and bathrooms! I am not losing money, which is good, but it just does not seem to be a huge moneymaker for me either. I am really starting to question my life choices.

I think when it comes to the high heel height of what is acceptable to wear or not, I get the win for being the most dumb! When I first met my wife, and found out she LOVED high heels, I wanted to get some for her as a gift. At the time, about 2012'ish, there were far more choices in stores, but the clerk working there was not a whole lot of help. So when a woman was there buying shoes I asked her what would be an appropriate pair for my wife to wear to church. She helped me pick out a pair and said something I will never forget, "just remember, for heels at church you never want to go over 3.5 inches (9 CM)". My wife does have a few 10 CM's, and a very few 12 cm's, but when I buy her shoes I never go over 9 cm so she can wear them on dates as well as to church. But yes... my height standard for church was set by some literal random stranger in a store 14 years ago! Yep; that is dumb! (Edited after I found a picture of her in those first heels I ever bought for her. The lady in the post above helped me pick these shoes out. Just keep in mind this was in 2012).

I know what you mean about the apprehension in terms of walking around the block in your new boots. I feel much the same about my 12cm boots. At the moment I have no place I could do that, but if I did I would still feel nervous about it. As you say, you have to start somewhere and you’ve already managed a 100 metre walk in them -which is something I’ve yet to do in my 12cm boots. it is funny how even just sitting in these lofty heels can help you get used to them. When I stand up to go make myself some coffee or make lunch, I’m automatically expecting the steepness and height of 12cm stilettos - it’s a mental thing but very useful for accepting the height and challenge of these heels

Yes, that's really interesting. From what I know, Louboutins generally are known for not being comfortable. With the Hot Chicks it's the combination of the height and tight/stiff toe box. The Pigalle are way more comfortable, but I've worn them so much that you could almost call them "worn out". Though they still hold up well, I'm sure I can wear them for many years to come. If I would wear the Hot Chicks as much as the Pigalle I think they'd get more comfortable too with time. Maybe I'll try my walk around the block in my boots this week. I'm a bit concerned that it will be very uncomfortable, but I got to start at some point. My indoor wearing also results in a lot of sitting, but as you say it still gets you familiar.

I assumed you meant the general comfort of the fit rather than the heel height. It’s interesting but perhaps not surprising, that the (presumably) much more expensive Louboutins should be a more uncomfortable fit and design than your boots. Both of those heel heights would be extremely challenging. As I practice in my 12cm heels I continually marvel that you are practicing in heels another centimetre or more higher. Yes the 170m walk around the block will be interesting but the fact that you can walk fluidly for 100 metres in those is impressive. i can easily see that during an evening out you would easily end up walking several hundred metres. ive been doing a lot of writing lately and so mainly wearing my practice heels sitting down but i like the increasing familiarity i feel with having them in my feet. Even seated I am aware of their added height and steeper pitch

@Shyheels The 100 meters were manageable. I'm curious how the walk around the block (170 m) will turn out. It sounds a lot, but for really wearing them out you quickly get a few hundred meters, so that's my goal to get as comfortable as possible in them to be able to wear them out more. By more comfortable than the Hot Chicks I mean the general shape and fit. The higher heel makes them more uncomfortable for walking, but the rest compensates a little for that. @Puffer In Germany it's the same with Deichmann. They almost only have "standard" shoes, nothing too exciting. @mlroseplant What a pity, a broken heel is a bad as it can get, but sounds like you managed it very well.

For me it's the same. For longer walks I always use such heels and they're really comfortable. @mlroseplant Yes, platforms where everywhere. Mine in the beginning were about 10 cm effective heel height or maybe a bit below, later they got higher. I don't have any of them anymore, but it was always fun. They gave such an height boost, it was crazy. And as you say, now they don't even seem high anymore. You really get used to it.

I know this feeling for sure, you can tell immediately when a heel gets weak/loose. I remember dragging one foot for almost a mile in an effort to keep the broken heel/sole from folding under the boot, very humiliating

There is nothing quite as discouraging as breaking a heel on a nice pair of boots for sure

I spent the entire day yesterday in high stiletto ankle boots. When adjusted for size and platform, the heel height was 10.4 cm. I am not quite telling the whole truth about that. I intended to spend the entire day in 10.4 cm stiletto boots, but fate had other plans for me. As documented elsewhere, I broke a heel about mid-afternoon and had to switch to 10 cm slim heeled boots after that. I would say that hobbling around on a broken heel for the better part of an hour was good practice for 12 cm, but I really don't think it was. It just made me grumpy, and made me look funny.

I had my second shoe failure of 2025 yesterday. However, this one was not catastrophic--in other words, it can be repaired. I was wearing my Aldo stiletto ankle boots to shop at Costco, and I noticed as soon as I stepped out of the car that something was very wrong. The heel on my right boot had indeed come loose, and was flexing wickedly in a way it wasn't meant to flex. I didn't have any alternatives with me in my wife's car, so I had to walk very strangely the whole time in order to keep from damaging the heel further. I prevailed in the end, I believe this shoe can be fully repaired, but it ruined an otherwise enjoyable outing. I'm doing pretty well this year. On an average year, I have about half a dozen shoe failures, and the vast majority of those result in the shoes being reclassified as landfill material. This year, I've only had two, and like I said, I'm sure this latest one is an easy fix. This despite the fact that I've walked significantly further in 2025 than I did in 2024.

You could always say “you don’t know until you try!”

I get the "I love your heels, but I can wears heels any more" quite often. Last week at our holiday party, I had my short heel knee highs on (location was not heel friendly) effective 9 cm rise (heel-platform) and two men came up (different times) to talk about heels. Both said about the same thing, "I couldn't walk in heels like that." One was the Board's chairman.

Wearing my 12cm stilettos are the best calf toning exercise I’ve ever come across. My first few times wearing them my calf muscles cramped up quite painfully but now wearing those boots is a pleasant calf workout

When I say The Era of Super High Heels, I don't necessarily mean the era of super steep heels. It's true, 15 cm heels were everywhere, but always with a 5 cm platform (at least). I see a lot of shoes from this era still for sale on the likes of Poshmark or ebay. I almost want to buy a pair, just to see how they are (or were). I assume your shoes from the mid 2000s had about a 10 cm difference between forefoot and heel? I must admit to owning several pairs of platform shoes in the 3 cm range, and even some up to 4 cm, but to me the heel must be more than 10 cm higher or the proportions just look "off" to me. For sure, in the midwestern U.S., heels were everywhere in the 1980s, but my sense of what was super high when I was a teenager was definitely different than it is today. When I was at university, one of my good friends was a violinist with whom I spent quite a lot of time. She always wore these really high black suede pumps when it came concert time, and we were required to wear formal black. I don't remember exactly how this happened, but her shoes got left behind in my dorm room overnight (without her, I must add). Although she was a 38, maybe a 38 1/2, which prevented me from actually trying the shoes on, I did put a tape measure to them. A touch shy of 9 cm. That's it. And those were super high heels back then to most people, including me. Today, this girl, now a woman of course, is really my only friend from uni that I stay in touch with. I have admitted examining her shoes way back when, and we got a good laugh out of it. Here's the kicker: She says she has no idea how she ever wore those shoes at all, much less every time she had occasion to dress up in the color black (which was pretty often for us music majors). I said to her, "Hon, you realize that 9 cm is like a mid heel to me, right?" Her max height is now about 3 cm. So very true: 8 cm heels count as heels, but they are quite manageable. I am trying to remember when it became thus for me, because I can recall my first public appearance in true elevated heel footwear that required a bit of walking, and it was to an event on our town square. It was about a half mile there and another half mile back to my house. I was wearing effectively 7 cm clogs. I remember the half mile home being impossibly long due to tired calf muscles. And I was pushing my then 3 year old son (now almost 17) in his stroller, so I even had something to hang on to. Now 7 cm barely even counts as a heel!

I’ve got a very high end lithium battery set up with 600w of solar, inverter, and BMS. The guy who set it up - as I discovered later - had never set up a lithium electrical system. Aside from solar the battery should also be able to be charged off the alternator - although that needs to be set up very carefully. A lithium battery can easily kill an alternator. This guy didn’t have a clue what he was doing and the alternator eventually blew. What should have been a straightforward fix - new alternator and proper set up - turned into a complete circus.

I must admit to being kind of jaded, having an industrial background, but I was kind of thinking the same thing. On the other hand, I absolutely hate dealing with automotive electrical gremlins.

I hope that all was rectified without further cost or inconvenience to you. It's hard to imagine that much would go wrong in a normal boat electrical installation. Are you using an inverter to provide 230v AC from 12v batteries, or solar power, or both? And do you have a facility to connect to the AC mains when moored in a suitable place?

There are no Deichmann branches near me and I rarely visit, but my impression is that it does (or did) have a limited range of women's footwear up to UK10. Maybe no longer. That said, most of the styles on offer (regardless of size) have always seemed to be pretty uninspiring, with few heels of any significance.

That’s so true - I find it funny to read where people speak of 3” (or 7,5cm) heels as being “high” and 10cm as virtually unmanageable. I’m no expert but I have no trouble with 10cm stilettos and find them quite fun to wear and 8cm heels are fine for long walks, almost unnoticeable as heels.

Wow! Congratulations! Well done! Walking 100 metres to a restaurant (and back again!) in those 13cm + boots is really impressive! And no doubt will help immensely with wearing your Hot Chicks. its interesting they were more comfortable than the Hot Chicks too. They are really nice boots and as you say, great for going out on occasions where you do more sitting than walking. Yes I was really pleased with my long walks in the 8cm heels. The heels themselves were really comfortable, it was just the uneven surface - almost like cobbles - that was the tricky part

@Shyheels I'm sure that helps! 5 km is quite a bit of walking, so even if it's "only" in 8 cm heels it will get you used to them very well. Yesterday I wore out my new boots for the first time 🙂 It was only a short walk from the car to the restaurant, about 100 m one way. But it was enough to feel the bit of extra height to the Hot Chicks again. Other than that, they're even more comfortable than the Hot Chicks, which is really nice. A very nice shoe for occasions with less walking and more sitting. I'll try them soon for my walk around the block. For further distances I still have to practice to make them more comfortable.

That's really nice! I can't say that about me. Maybe for them it's even more fascinating that you're a man wearing them, than if a woman wears them and it's still rather normal. I was never aware that I grew up in the era of super high heels, but as I've read a bit of your historic experience already it seems so. When I started wearing heels I liked platforms the most. Then when I started wearing them for everyday life I shifted towards non-platforms which I still prefer until today. But I still have a few with smaller platforms that I like to wear now and then. It's like a love of my youth that never really let me go 🙂 Haha yes, and for others it's "I could never walk in those"