ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the notion of gender in relation to design and attempts to equate the process of making with the construction of meaning. It discusses the stiletto heel in terms of its manufacture and production process alongside ideas concerning representation from its inception in the early 1950s to its demise as a mass fashion item a decade later. The heel is the component of the shoe which has become the most visible expression of gender in that, in the nineteenth century, high heels became ‘female’ footwear and were disallowed in a male sartorial code. Feminists have often cast the stiletto as an object of exploitation, along with other items of clothing which appear to be inherently feminine. The exaggeration of gender attributes and an open display of gender difference has been labelled as exploitative when part of the female sartorial code.
