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Don’t want to topple around in a sweaty stiletto this summer, yet find flats and flip-flops too casual? The kitten heel seems to be the happy medium of hot weather footwear. Take it from the influencers: Kendall Jenner was photographed sporting a slingback mini-heel with a pair of ankle-cropped jeans, while Gigi Hadid stepped out in tiny-heeled mules to go with her print trousers.
Though the micro-heel, which varies in measurements from around 1.5 to 1.75 inches, is back, it has sometimes suffered from a slighted reputation as the signature shoe of not-a-girl-not-yet-a-woman stage in life. (The shoe was an early aughts go-to, the choice of Paris Hilton circa her hard-partying days and the Olsen twins’ teenage debuts on the red carpet.) On the other hand, kitten heels have also been considered prissy and buttoned-up, fit for an irritable osteoporotic secretary on Mad Men. Opinions at the Vogue office fall on both ends of the spectrum. “If you’re going to wear a heel, commit to it. If you want to be comfortable, wear flats,” says Fashion News Editor Monica Kim. “The kitten heel is a weird in-between. It’s like baby’s first heel. . . what you’d wear to your first middle school dance.” Culture Editor Alessandra Codinha agrees: “They’re more flattering than flats, but only barely.”
The shoe can be cutesy, and lacks that vampish effect that comes with mastering the balancing act of stilettos. A high heel will induce a shift-in-gravity stance and alluring hip sway, referred to as torque, whereas the kitten heel seems to merely come with a shuffle motion and a clack.
The kitten heel’s mixed reputation has historical roots. “Lower heels were offered to women and women wore them in different situations, but then it took on this connection to youthfulness and teenage girls,” says Elizabeth Semmelhack, senior curator at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Canada. “It got connected to ideas that it is more accessible for young girls to be wearing this, not as hyper-sexualized.” By the 1960s, the kitten heel, then referred to as a “tapered heel,” was also adopted by older women for its youthful connotation. There was also the exoticism factor: The footwear was marketed in the United States as the “Sabrina” heel—a name derived from the 1954 Paris-set Audrey Hepburn film Sabrina—or a princesse heel, or as “Spanish heels.”
For all its baggage, though, the silhouette suddenly looks fresh, with new cuts and proportions. It was seen at Victoria Beckham for Resort 2018 as a white sandal slingback with thimble-sized heels and Céline in the form of snappy yellow mules for Spring 2017—neither version stuffy or childish. The most important factor is to show some skin or a toe via a slingback or a sandal. Remember that, and the kitten heel is the cat’s meow.
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