Chorlini

4 hours ago, Shyheels said:

Leeds and York are both university cities and I see heels there right across the age spectrum - not loads of them, but they’re not rare either. Maybe it’s just Holland 

We just had Iowa confirming my observation.

9 hours ago, Shyheels said:

Perhaps it is you that is living in the odd spot. I certainly see heels where I am, in the north of England. They are not ubiquitous, but it’s not like seeing a UFO either. If I take the train into Leeds or York I will certainly see stilettos. 

I live and work in a university city, which has a massive overabundance of young women. The only time I see a woman in heels is when she is in her 40's and 50's.

On 5/20/2024 at 7:10 PM, killer heels said:

Thanks for the replies.  I would have agreed women wearing proper heels ie above 4 inches is unlikely to return but then I thought back to the period of 95 to 2005 for example.  I dont recall seeing many women in the offices and bars wearing them then either, that came bk a few years later....so who knows.

I remember you saying that before, but I NEVER saw any of that. All I ever see is an ocean of flats. You might live in a tiny island of abnormality, where the women still wear high heels, because for the rest of us it's like seeing a UFO.

8 hours ago, Bubba136 said:

 Chorlini is right.  Women these days are more interested in maintaining their feminity in a more comfortable style while still identifying their “difference“ wearing highly decorated accessories.  Hence the popularity around here of Crocks” in different colors and outrageously adorned buckles and bows.  Additionally, there seems to be increasing interest in feminizing men, dressing them up and opposite role playing.  Just take a look at some of the more popular social websites.

While I can’t tell the extent this trend is practiced, I can recognize the decline in “open” disapproval of crossdressing men appearing in public.  Perhaps this trend can be attributed to the increased publicity given to LGBT activities by the press because lately, outside of a few short inquisitive glances, there seems to be hardly any interest in my wearing girls shoes 👞 anywhere. (For example, l wore my tan booties with 1 1/2 inch heels to Church this morning and nobody showed any notice.)

Perhaps this “live and let live” attitude will prevail or even increase over the next few years.  I can’t say that it is a bad thing as long as society doesn’t impose conditions upon me that require my acceptance of their sexual identity situation.  My preference is to remain entirely neutral because I have my own wants/desires.
 

 

 

 

Thing is, women say that they support and want to see men in heels and other feminine clothing, but for themselves they want a masculine dude. Listen to what they do, never what they say. Also, the whole crossdressing part is part of the LGHDTV brigade. And they are not making themselves popular with the majority of people. Better to stay away from lest we get tainted when the backlash against the LGHDTV brigade will happen. Although at the moment, if you are a white dude and want to get a job you now vastly increase your chances of getting hired showing up at the job interview wearing heels then in regular attire. After all, male and pale is stale, is now the mantra.

5 hours ago, Shyheels said:

Fashion is cyclical - always has been always will be. That's the very nature of fashion. Yes, fewer women are wearing heels at the moment, and for the reasons you say. It is not the same as corsets at all. Everybody wears something on their feet. There will continue to be diversity in styles, and shifting tastes. 

It is certainly easier for a guy to wear heels. I have been wearing my chunky heeled ankle boots (3.5" heels) and chunky heeled OTK boots in the old coal mining towns where I am now and do not attract any notice or attention whatsoever.

Whether or not high heels are in fashion is largely irrelevant to me. They're in fashion with me. If I was worried about what everyone else was wearing, I'd never have started wearing heels in the first place.  

Fashion is cyclical, and some things have fallen completely out of the public mind. Like corsets. Other then a minor resurgence where a small group of people will embrace them I don't EVER see them coming back in general fashion. And so will high heels. Women will still covet them, may want to own a couple of pairs, but most will never bother to learn how to wear them so it will be going out to an occasion and then sit down ASAP wear. And I think the professions where women used to be required to wear them, like in law, are under pressure to do away with this custom of the 'patriarchy'.

I like checking out thrift stores, as I collect movies and TV shows on physical media. If they have heels I usually do a quick skim, but overall it's like 99.99% too small for me. I'm just right of that EU38-41 that the majority of women are in and whose shoes end up in thrift stores.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the age of the high heel is over. Like the corset it had its time. And now women value comfort over style. We live in the age of Fat Tok, body positive and where women feel they don't need to put in the effort to look good, because every woman is now a 10. Will heels make a limited return? Well, the western still returns briefly every often so years. But as I have also said before, if you don't grow up wearing heels regularly and learn how to wear them they won't endear themselves to late 20 or 30 somethings putting them on. And even the designer heel craze of the 2010's was mostly one of a minority of women trying to look good on red carpets. In daily life I can't say I ever saw a woman wear a pair of louboutins.

Now chunky heels and platforms, usually the combination of both, will be with us in the future still, as in the minds of their wearers they marry style with comfort.

Over here banks used to be everywhere, even the smallest village had a bank office. Now they're all gone. Like I said, I live in the 8th biggest city of the Netherlands, there's just 1 small one office left of my bank. There were  4 or 5 offices 20 years ago with 1 giant regional headoffice, then we went to just that 1 regional headoffice somewhere in the 00's, and they downsized even that one a few years ago. Now there's only 3 offices of that bank left in the entire province. Everything is done online. I reckon only digitally illiterate seniors still go to a bank. Or people who need a big loan or mortgage.

My late grandmother was digitally illiterate and she lived in a tiny hamlet till not that long ago. And having to adjust her regular payments was a major logistical exercise finding the people who could take her to a bank office halfway across the province she lived in..

I think I threw out 2 dozen pairs earlier this year in a clean up. And I probably STILL have too many.

All my heels are home wear only. For me it is fetish stuff mostly, I don't have any desire to wear them daily.

Stilettos, over 12cm minimum, no platforms. If it's chunky its not a high heel to me.

On 4/11/2024 at 3:56 AM, Bubba136 said:

Shows there are some individuals still willing to exercise their fashion boldness, out there. 
🙂

Or....., he may be LGHDTV brigade, making a political statement. Ironically these days with DEI infesting everything as a man you will probably have more success getting a job when wearing a skirt then a pair of trousers.

On 2/8/2024 at 11:28 AM, Shyheels said:

Another day in the big city yesterday - and in the shuffling crowds an encouraging number knee and ankle boots with chunky heels of varying heights and even a couple of pair of stilettos. Looking at the demographics of the wearers make it clear that it’s the older age group with the sense of style - not only nicer (undoubtedly more expensive) boots but worn with greater panache, the standout being a stylish but by no means showy woman in her sixties looking effortlessly at ease in black OTK boots with 3-4 inch heels and a stylish but generally conservative long coat.  

I've seem two women wearing stiletto heels this past month in the supermarket. Both were older women.

On 4/11/2024 at 11:32 AM, mlroseplant said:

I went to the bank to draw out cash in anticipation of my new motorbike purchase, documented elsewhere, and one of the tellers was wearing purple suede stiletto boots. I'm guessing 3 3/4" heel, maybe 4" if she has a bigger shoe size, so pretty decent. Had I been wearing heels myself (I came directly from my construction job), I would have asked/commented, but I didn't, instead. It's been a long time since I've seen anybody wearing real heels around here. I mean, besides me. I have half a mind to find some excuse to go to the bank for the next few Fridays just to see if that was a one-off.

You can still go to a bank? An actual physical bank to get money in person? 😲 Banks have all but disappeared from the high streets here in the Netherlands. I live in the 8th biggest city and I am not even sure any of our banks still has a office here.

I wouldn't mind wearing a 3 piece suit every day. I even have quite a few, but sadly the beer bug has caused me to no longer fit into most of them. I saw a video recently of Podcast of the Lotus Eaters where Carl was talking to a guest dressed in a 3 piece suit and he said why not dress your best whenever you can? Why look like a slob when you can look like a gentleman? It used to not just be normal, it was almost mandatory and even factory workers owned at least 1 suit. Will it make you look old fashioned? Probably. But it will also give you a leg up over all the casual dressed dudes in jeans and t-shirts. It might do wonders to your career. And maybe, just maybe it would motivate women to look more feminine again too?

5 hours ago, Shyheels said:

Nobody walked in stilettos until the 1950s when they suddenly became the fashion, and women very swiftly learned how to do it. The same will happened again - all it would take is some K-Pop band on Tik-Tok to make heels their thing and it would be a craze. 

As part of my job I must scan a lot of old photos. There is a crucial difference to back then and today. Femininity is under attack and the ruling feminist establishment HATES all things feminine. So women are pushed to adopt male garb instead. Stilettos were seen and still are as the height of femininity. As such it is frowned upon. When stilettos emerged you would not see a woman in baggy jeans and flats. Feminine garb was the norm since like forever even before the stiletto. That norm is gone. Also, I recently saw an episode of podcast of the Lotus Eaters, and Carl was interviewing Calvin Robinson. Calvin was dressed in suit and tie, Carl in comfy loungewear. People have stopped presenting themselves at their best in favor of comfort. To some people presenting themselves at their best means wearing an expensive track suit and designer sneakers. Women are giving up femininity and adopting genderconfusion and comfort is the way of the land.

Might things change if some K-pop band were to wear heels? Well, maybe temporary. Just like the odd Western hit in cinema was prophecized as a return of the Western. It did not. A brief fad does not equal a trend. Nor can it undo generations of women accustomed to wearing sneakers and those accursed army boots. They might wear them for the odd occasion, or because of some fad, but because they are not used to them, and the absence of a culture imperative to present themselves as feminine it will be young women tottering around uncomfortably. And it will be the equivalent of going to the restaurant and only putting the heels on to get from the car to the dinner table. Fads do not equal trends, and the trend has been against heels for a long time, even during the designer heel craze.

On 10/8/2023 at 8:24 PM, Cali said:

I saw many under 40 women in 3+ inch heels, one in at least 5 inches in the last 10 days.

I don't know where you live, in my neck of the woods, a Dutch university city so TONS of young women, NOTHING! 2" chunky at the most. These are the women who will never pick up heels as they never learned to walk in them. And when I do see a woman in heels she is almost always way over 40.

19 hours ago, Shyheels said:

I don’t agree. Heels are certainly in a cyclical low and I don’t thing they will rebound in the way typical fashion cycles have worked in the past. Social media and enforced herd-think has changed that forever. But I do not think that heels will fade out completely or that heel wearers will be relegated to a niche fetish community. Nor are heels analogous to corsets.

Corsets, ruffed collars, powdered wigs etc have all had their day and are pretty well extinct. The heel is a staple design feature on nearly all forms of dress footwear - men’s or women’s. At issue is the height of the heel. As long as this design feature persists, designers will tinker with it. And there is no sign of this design feature disappearing - only that it is less exaggerated.

While stilettos may be scarce these days boots with two to three inch chunky heels are common. And I dare say will remain so. And I doubt even the stiletto will disappear.

High heels have been around for well over a century, although the stiletto for only the past 70 years or so. They are well established in the zeitgeist and while I think it will take more that the typical fashion cycle to bring back the kind of stiletto wearing common in the 1980s and early 2000s, high heels are not going to disappear 

Corsets were around as a staple of women's clothing for centuries. They even outlasted powdered wigs by centuries. Completely gone now. What makes you think that heels will fare any better? They're going the way of the dodo because something else has cropped up which completely upended the cycles of fashion. Modern day feminism. It HATES ANYTHING feminine. We have reached the weird zeitgeist where women don't want to wear heels because they are feminine, and feminism teaches them that anything feminine is bad. But guys wearing heels, as in the gender destruction ideology, that fits right in there. And again, all those women who never learned to walk in heels in their formative years aren't going to magically pick up that skill. Even the whole designer heel craze of the last years was just a craze of the upper and upper middle class women, not of women in general. In general it has been sneakers and those accursed army boots. Hell, even in p0rn I see more and more women wearing sneakers.

Heels are going the way of the Western. That genre which once dominated Hollywood movies for decades since its beginning. And then one day it was over. And occasionally we still get a western, maybe two, and the trades call it return to the genre. And then it dies out again. So it will be with heels. The vast majority of women will stop wearing them or think themselves adventurous wearing 2" chunky heels. Some will still wear 4" or higher, but they will be mostly in certain professional spheres, like entertainment or law. Without young people taking up heel wearing there is no cyclical return. And I don't count 2" chunky heels or flatforms as heels.

On 9/20/2023 at 6:17 PM, alphax said:

It's another prescient vision of the future by Musk, because Twitter might very well indeed be everyone's (e)x-platform in the future...

Heel heights are definitely cyclical.

What do they say?  Stocks, hemlines and heels go up together?

In the 70s the pundits thought all women would be wearing baggy t-shirts and Birkenstocks from then on but that didn't happen.

Even in the 70's women still wore heels. Just chunky platform ones. Now they have all but disappeared. I don't buy into the cyclical thing. We have generations of women now who never wore heels and they are NEVER going to wear heels. If you are not used to wearing them they will hurt you every time you them and as a result you will want to wear them even less. It is over. On the rare occasion I see a woman in heels it's almost 99% of the time a woman in her 40's or older. And lets be realistic about it, women wearing heels is a fairly recent thing. Before WW2 it was rare to see a woman in heels, it only gained mass support in the 50's and 60's, with increased wealth and prosperity for the lower and middle classes on the one hand, and the advent of the stiletto heel on the other. Overall, it was only a few generations of women that wore heels and I reckon they will be relegated to the same niche fetish community as was the corset. And the corset was around for a much longer time. I hear no one speaking of some cycle whereby corsets will make a comeback. High heels everywhere was a phase, it happened, and now we are in the dying days of that phase.

On 9/14/2023 at 11:54 PM, Cali said:

My son sell many things on the net. I asked him about selling some of my CFM heels. They are in very good condition, but they are not very comfortable to wear long time.  So they have sat on the shelf for YEARS.

To him it was just not worth it.  Yes, he might be able to get as much as $30 each, but the work to showcase them was not worth his time.  I plan to try some consignment stores or donate to a LGB... support group or a ...

Then I have several Charles by Charles David gladiator wedges where the glue has failed. I have gotten my use out of them  However. I have not found decent replacements. And I looked! And looked1 Those heels go into my shop and hopefully I can get them back in my closet before fall rain.

I agree. For the amount of work that you have to put into selling them and for the money you're most likely to get it's just not worth the time.

Call it whatever you will. And yes, occasionally you have to trim the collection down. Ideally you'd sell them off, but I find it mentally tiring to do so, dealing with the lowballers and weirdos. Not the fine folk here, who are all well rounded individuals. But when you've tried to sell some shoes a couple of times and you get people who say they get turned on by them and that they like to suck dick, that kinda makes you want to stop selling them and instead just dump them in a used clothing collection point.

On 8/12/2023 at 1:04 PM, Jkrenzer said:

The former, right at the entrance 

The grate culprit. I didn't actually step into it directly but as I was walking my heel tip just caught an inside edge of one if the openings. The sudden stop combined with the natural movement as my body mass didn't immediately stop caused my other foot to swing forward and it connected with my stuck foot already out of position. Suddenly my entire body mass is forward of both feet and down I went. All this in a split second.

1 hour ago, mlroseplant said:

It seems like an exceptionally bad place to put that, heels or no heels. I shall have to check and see where they have placed the drain in my local favored beer cooler and take careful note of it.

They probably don't expect people in heels to come walking in into a place called 'The Beer Den'.

On 6/24/2023 at 12:15 PM, mlroseplant said:

In a more casual setting, it is my observation that the platform trend has settled largely on combat type boots with a thick sole, and a low to mid-rise clunky heel. This can range from kinda cool to absolutely hideous, depending upon the extremism of the sole. I even saw like an 8 or 10 year old girl wearing combat boots with a dress the other day. They had 4 inch heels and 1 inch platform. On the other hand, on the same night, I saw another girl of similar age wearing a dress and cute little gold wedge sandals, so there is hope for the future.

One demographic that does not seem to have embraced the huge platform is Asian women my age. They either wear flat sandals or mid-heeled sandals at this time of year, same as they always have. Latinas wear heels sometimes. White women do not wear heels. Trainers are everywhere for all demographics. I am speaking of casual out and about situations, not weddings or church.

Spot on! It's an epidemic of trainers and combat boots out there. I think in the past three months I saw 1 young woman in heels. And I live in a university city with an above average young female population.

I order a LOT from them. Including heels. I have better experience and success rates with them then with Ali or even Asos.

I rather have frivolous negative reviews, I can at least recognize those, then fake positive ones or knowing that companies openly screen and adjust their reviews. Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB have become notorious for filtering out shitloads of negative movie reviews for certain movies that fit the 'right narrative'. Like the current Little Mermaid rehash. Amazon has done the same for their Rings of Power abortion. If they have the ability to 'filter' their reviews, how can I trust any of their reviews if I want to buy a product or see something?

These days I enjoy wearing leggings even more then heels. It's a great combo.

4 hours ago, mickeyunc said:

you have a style name or number?

 

i searched pleaser website and sent then a picture. and they said they dont carry that style

The Sexy 20 range I'd guess. But they have been scrapping a lot of shoes of that range.

Haven't seen or worn anything like that since I was a kid in the 70's on holidays. Which is to me what it represents. It's interesting to see that everybody can and does find their own niche in this thing.