“Are you ready, boots?” » In his 1966 hit These Boots Are Made for Walkin’, Nancy Sinatra launches her boots to attack an inappropriate lover: “These boots are made for walking/And that’s just what they’re going to do/One of these days these boots are going to end up trampling on you.” » When songwriter and producer Lee Hazlewood goes to the Sinatras to offer some songs to Nancy, he takes the opportunity to perform a tune inspired by a line from Frank Sinatra (the father, present that day) in the western Four from Texas. He has no plans to entrust this piece to anyone and wishes to keep it for himself. But, excited, Nancy insists: “I told him that, coming from a man, the song was harsh and aggressive, but it was perfect sung by a young girl,” she will explain later.
She was 26 when she filmed Scopitone, the ancestor of the music video, which admirably captures the era. With a surprising mix of nonchalance and menace, she sings an anti-love song that some will hear as a feminist anthem. The father’s cowboy boots become high boots with small heels for the daughter, erected as a symbol.
In fact, boots historically represent military power and might. They are also an attribute of riders, that is to say those (rarer) who enjoy a certain freedom of movement.
Cunning and cheating
In the stories, their power is magical. This is the case with seven-league boots, which allow you to cover around thirty kilometers in a single stride. And, in a way, those which give authority (and style) to Puss in Boots, a feline using cunning and cheating to offer fortune and the hand of a princess to his penniless master. The morality of Puss in Boots is cloudy. It must be said that high boots are not afraid of venturing onto shifting terrain. Essential for any good dominatrix’s wardrobe, the stiletto heel thigh-high boots joyfully borrow from the fetish and BDSM world.
In The devil wears Prada, Andrea Sachs (Anne Hathaway) appears dressed in a spectacular pair of thigh-high boots, heavily signifying her metamorphosis after her makeover – and the announced reversal of the relationship of domination. If the model worn in the film is by Chanel (early 2000s), it was Cristóbal Balenciaga who, in 1963, brought the high boot out of the riding arenas and onto the catwalks. It is worn first with sports suits, then with miniskirts – according to an implicit rule: the shorter the skirt, the higher the boot can be (or vice versa).
It was the advent of the go-go boot, the flagship model of which remained that of Courrèges, which marked the 1960s with its white boot with a flat heel, giving girls the appearance of astronauts. The high boot therefore stands out as an important part of the uniform of modern Amazons, even of the future, like its most galactic archetype: Jane Fonda in Vadim’s film, Barbarella. Half a century later, in the absence of weightlessness, it is still a matter of dealing with gravity while walking. Since that’s what boots are made for.
