Stiletto Heels were invented in Italy and became very popular in the 1950s. And popularity did not stem only from women, as men desired women to wear stiletto heels just as often. At first, the heel was looked at as another way to make someone look taller while adding a certain panache to their style. Stilleto heels are very appealing.

As time went on, stiletto heels became known more for their erotic nature than for their ability to create height. Stiletto heels are a common fetish item. As a fashion staple for women, their popularity has waxed and waned. After an initial wave of popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s, they faded from the scene until the early 1980s, when stiletto heels became de rigueur for American professional women to wear at the office with their wide-shouldered "power suits". The style survived through much of the 1980s but almost completely disappeared during the 1990s, when professional and college-age women took to wearing shoes with thick, blocky heels. However, the slender stiletto heel staged a major comeback after 2000, when young women adopted the style for dressing up officewear or adding a feminine touch to casualwear like jeans.

Stiletto heels are worn for the same reasons as any other pair of high heeled shoes. In addition to adding several inches to a person's height, the heels alter posture by forcing the leg to turn out slightly and the hips to sashay slightly. While many people feel this makes a person's legs more attractive, daily wear can cause leg, hip and back problems.

Stilettos are particularly associated with the image of the femme fatale, and are often considered to be a seductive item of clothing.

Stiletto heels are often used in trampling fetishism where in the event that a dominant female would trample on a submissive (usually a male) with the intention of hurting him for a sexual pleasure received by both the dominant and the submissive.

 

Kinky boots are boots with extreme characteristics which are intended to present a dramatic sexy appearance, such as by a prostitute or dominatrix. Extreme characteristics might include very high heels, thigh- or crotch-high length, or unusual colors or materials. They can be related to boot fetishism, a kind of shoe fetishism which thus make them a form of fetish clothing. The term is ambiguous, since what can be considered kinky by some can be seen as elegant fashion by others.

Boots of this type, and specifically the thigh-high leather boots worn by Honor Blackman in her role as Cathy Gale in The Avengers, are referred to in the 1964 song "Kinky Boots" by Honor Blackman and Patrick Macnee. Usually, nowadays the term is connected to the type of thigh-high boots used e.g. by Julia Roberts in the movie Pretty Woman and by Madonna in her Re-Invention Tour in 2004.

The term “kinky boots” was coined in the UK in the early 1960s when high-heeled boots, which had previously been worn in the 'underground' fetish and sadomasochistic world of the Dominatrix and her clients, broke into mainstream female fashion. The term 'sexual kink' (meaning not entirely straight) was used, often in a jocular sense, to describe an unusual sexual desire that was not sufficiently deviant to attract the word perversion. Since men who were attracted to women in boots (which symbolised power) were still basically heterosexual, the term kinky rather than pervert (which at that time mainly denoted homosexuals) was applied to them. The term thus became applied to the boots that were worn by women because of their previous association with S&M.

The original "Kinky Boots" were calf length (and later knee length) pull on black leather boots with 4 inch high stiletto heels and pointed toes. This was the kind of boot worn by Honor Blackman (Cathy Gale) and Diana Rigg (Emma Peel) in the original "Avengers" television series; Honor Blackman and Patrick McNee (John Steed) cut a single record called "Kinky Boots" which hit the UK charts at that time. "Kinky boot beasts" make a brief appearance in the Sea of Monsters sequence in the 1968 Beatles' movie Yellow Submarine.

The boots were soon available in other colours, white being popular, and all heel heights. Later, from the mid 60's onwards, the stiletto went out of fashion and calf and even thigh boots with lower thick heels or even flat heels came into fashion. These made it across the 'pond' to the states and were called "go-go boots" in the US; however in the UK they were mostly still called "Kinky Boots" and the term was still being applied to the high-heeled platform boots (a very big hit in the UK) of the 1970's.

Boots are such a staple female fashion these days, that the term is now usually only used for the original type of dominatrix S&M boot that gave rise to the term in the first place –- outrageously sexy very high stiletto boots, generally of thigh length and in either black or white or bright shiny colours.

The film Kinky Boots was released in 2005 and told the story of an ailing company of high quality traditional male shoemakers that found a new lease of life making high heeled fetish footwear for transvestites, S&M lovers and the sex industry generally.