Are high heels becoming obsolete?

[SlipperOrchid]

I rarely wear anything except flats anymore. It wasn't intentional, simply practical footwear for chasing young children around.

However, more often than not, if I was going out for the evening, I wore mid heels as I felt more 'dressed up' in them. My heels were neither comfortable nor uncomfortable although if I had to choose, I will say the latter as when I got home I kicked them off

My social life has changed from late nigh bars to restaurants and putting on heels to go and sit down with my feet under a table seems bordering on insanity.

Trainers are now more popular than ever. I have over ten pairs and wear them daily apart wearing flat boots when it rains (like today!).

I follow En Brogue and she never wears heels and although I know this started for medical reasons, her choice of flat shoes makes perfect sense for everyone.

At the weekend, I had a great seat by an upstairs window in a coffee shop in a capital city where I spent over an hour people watching. Everyone was wearing flat shoes or trainers. I saw one woman who clumped around rather ungracefully in heeled boots and she stood out quite a lot.

Afterwards | went shoe shopping (for a pair of loafers in Aldo) and noticed for the first time that the section for 'high heels' was tiny.
Am I simply totally unstylish these days? Do many of you still wear heels? Or have heels had their day?

I should add that I under 5ft 3" and always liked feeling taller in heels :).

My sister, who works in the fashion industry overseas gets frustrated with the London dress code not because it limits her but because she wants to see more people looking fabulous. It was amusing to see how many people approached her to compliment her style - shrinking violet she is not - but heels would be too dull! I always up my game a bit when she's around - even in London - I'll always look less try hard when she's around!

People do look fabulous in London, just not in a done up to the nines kind of way.

Personally I love the fashion in London. So many different kinds of looks going on.

People do look fabulous in London depends how you define fabulous and it certainly isn't low key, imo!

Understated fabulous is much more fabulous in my book.

I'd find that don't look try-hard palaver just as oppressive as any other dress code
Yes of course! It’s potentially more stressy in fact because the rules aren’t as obvious

Agree with that, but also agree with PPs saying that heels in the office these days scream 'office junior trying to impress". Ditto traditional suits for women, unless you're a barrister or in some other super-traditional setting.

Understated fabulous is much more fabulous in my book. Of course it is! Fabulous in your world is whatever you want it to be!

I dress understated most of the time but sometimes it's fun to break out. The incessant 'too cool to dress up' attitude can get a bit joyless I think.

There are plenty of people in London who get dressed up. It's not like everyone's walking around in normcore jeans and plimsolls.

There is also a bit of an arms race in how cool you can be in flats, even in the west country. I wear flats all the time, but I'm tuning in to the nuances. Hotter is not where it's at, unless you've embraced beige big time, and (at 60+) I'm far from doing so. So expensive Italian trainers, not main-stream mass-market designer, is where I choose to shop, albeit for reasons of economy, it's never this year's models.

Not on my watch they're not!
Most people though wear trainers on the commute and change into heels for the office.

The young ones will always teeter on high heels at the weekends.

You're getting old.

I had always heard how about how fabulous the Parisians with style but I was hugely disappointed, no difference to London women really- understated maybe a bit invisible. The men though - they did seem better dressed, not so conservative - they looked like they enjoyed showing off a bit!

‘Dressing up’ can vary enormously though. For some wearing trousers instead of jeans is dressed up. For others wearing a dress instead of trousers is dressed up. The celebratory tone of many posts in this thread is because heels are no longer deemed a necessary wardrobe inclusion in order to feel dressed up. People are breaking free from the social conditioning where a vast number of women felt heels were expected by others to be seen as ‘dressed up’. People now feel more comfortable dressing as they like and that is joyful to many.

You don't see many women in heels here, at least not during the daytime. I don't go out at night so don't know about club wear. Most women seem to wear trainers or flat boots, you still see some Uggs.
Will they come back into fashion? I doubt it personally, at least not on a big scale. Once you've got used to wearing trainers all the time it's hard to give that comfort and practicality up. There's no way I will ever wear heels again, not even for a wedding.

I definitely vary at work. Anything from UGG wilcox to 4 inch heels to ballet flats. And trousers to fishnets
My manager did comment he could never guess whether I would be treading the line of dressed up or down every day

'People are breaking free from the social conditioning where a vast number of women felt heels were expected by others to be seen as ‘dressed up’.'

Christ on a bike.

Maybe I'm alone in never having felt any pressure to wear heels?

I see little sign of women breaking free.
When young women stop stressing that a line between their eyes is making them look cross then maybe I'll start to believe it.
I can't see giving up heels as anything more than fashion.

I hate the fact that this is seen as some sort of feminist issue, breaking free?
I don't agree. If you don't want to wear them, fine, no problem.
But, I like wearing them. Not all the time, occasionally, for dressing up, for a night out.

And I disagree with OP entirely, I don't see them as going out of fashion, or hopefully not.

Thing is @Floisme, as a pp said, there’s no going back. Once you’ve got used to flat shoes the thought of wearing little torture chambers again is anathema. There’s a huge swathe of women who will never wear heels again or will refuse to ever wear them.

And there are plenty who will, as has always been the case.

Breaking free? PMSL!!!!

I love heels (though my feet not so much), but I rarely wear flats in a formal environment. I don't teeter around in 4 inch heels doing the hoovering, but work/socialising I always wear heels.

Heels give me a sense of power. I don't like men towering over 'the little woman', so I stand up to my full height and look them straight in the eye (assisted by my heels )

i loathe trainers and hate this trend for wearing them with summer dresses....trainers should be for sport only
I agree. Low heeled boots, brogues or sandals for me. Just as comfortable and not as ugly. Trainers are gym wear.

Actually seeing as the En Brogue blog is mentioned, she seems to think the trainer trend has peaked and is on the way out again.

I remember going to weddings and if a woman under a certain age wasn’t wearing heels, people would wonder why. For people who wanted but could not wear heels there wasn’t much choice around so she stood out like a sore thumb, at least until the time in the evening where the heel wearers kicked them off to go dancing!