ADFAS steps up to host High Heel Heaven by Dr Peter McNeil in Wodonga

The suffragettes used to pound the pavement in their heels in Britain to avoid being called unfeminine while women even played tennis in elevated shoes.

The intriguing history of high heels will be revealed by Dr Peter McNeil in his lecture High Heel Heaven in Wodonga on Monday.

Hosted by the Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Societies Murray River at the Butter Factory Theatre, Dr McNeil will explore the power, mobility and history of shoes from Renaissance platforms to shoes in fairytales, boots for war to the cult of shoe designers.

Dr McNeil said shoes were important on social, economic and political levels; boys who didn't own shoes during the 19^th century couldn't work.

He said shoes had many practical functions but just as many symbolic functions.

"We bronze baby shoes to preserve them and the saddest thing we do is our last act of removing our loved one's shoes when they die," he said.

"Shoes are really part of the cycle of life."

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Dr McNeil is a world figure in fashion research and has worked between Australia, Sweden and Finland.

He is now Distinguished Professor of Design History at University of Technology Sydney.

Dr McNeil said the rise of famous shoe designers this century had been a major development.

He said being a cobbler was historically regarded as a humble trade.

"As shoes are recognisably one of the most powerful but also most complex items of apparel, the relationship between wearer and producer is often portrayed as an intimate one," he said.

"Carrie Bradshaw, the heroine of the series Sex and the City is a case in point.

"Although her relationship with world-famous shoe designer Manolo Blahnik was not a personal one, her passion for Blahnik shoes made the designer a character who appears almost a friend and very intimate in the series.

"Jimmy Choo also appears in her imagination as the type I have coined the 'male Cinderella' maker."

The lecture runs on Monday at 6pm. Tickets ($20) are available at the door.

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