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Amanda Foreman, historian, author of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire

These fashions are a way of limiting women at times when they are getting more powerful. In the mid and late-19th century, the bustle and corset became the style of the times – fashions that limited the female form. In came a physical restriction that created an idealised version of women.

You don’t need to be a psychiatrist to figure it out, but fashion is largely controlled by gay men, who can ultra-feminise the female form through their designs. Now, there are fewer power struggles than at any point in history, but fashion doesn’t reflect the power of women being free: they are still constrained.

These shoes are obviously not for the working woman, they aren’t designed for cobbled streets. They’re not real life, but a little fantasy. You have to ask as a purchaser, what do these do to me as a human being? These shoes should go back in the box – they are ridiculous and essentially disempowering.

Alexandra Shulman, editor, British Vogue

Designer brands have done particularly well with accessories over the past five years. Big shoes were an obvious next step. They can’t get much higher, so I think it’ll calm down now.

Heels can be comfortable no matter how high. A great shoe designer can make a skyscraper – with careful balancing and skill it’ll look easy to wear.

People will always notice shoes – I personally think it’s from too many people spending too long looking down at the floor – so they’re worth investing in.

I have always worn heels, but you can see that in some people it really changes the way they feel. It’s the same as putting on a new dress – something that takes you out of the everyday.

Men do find them attractive – wearing heels is certainly not all about women and other women. Attraction is part of the attraction.

Lady Antonia Fraser, historian and author

The thing that fascinates me about high heels (which I adore) is that men have also worn them as a fashion statement – not because, like Sarkozy, they were physically challenged. Although it is often said that Louis XIV wore high heels to enhance his height, this is quite untrue. He wore them because they were elegant.

How I wish I could wear one of those fabulous pairs of black stilettos with flashing red soles by Christian Louboutin. But I’m afraid the result would be the following: “Lady biographer bites dust.”

Plum Sykes, novelist and fashion journalist

When you hit 30 you lose your edge. I am 38 now, and these weird space-age shoes look cool and trendy and are a way of getting that back to some degree. Younger girls can handle the extreme pain, they can take more shocks to the system. These shoes are exhausting.

The girls who are meant to wear them are walking out of their house, getting straight into a chauffeur-driven car; the shoes come off, and then they’re back on again, straight on to a nice soft red carpet where they walk for 20 yards. They, unlike us, don’t need really to be able to walk.

This type of trend is not a classic version of beauty. Men want women to be sexy. They’d be happy if we were all Gisele Bündchen, but that’s just not fashion. Men don’t like to be towered over by women, so it’s really only for gay men and other women.

Camille Paglia, academic and author

High heels with exposed legs are a distinctly modern fetish, part of the Jazz Age legacy of rising hemlines and manic, hot-to-trot dancing.

The Fifties stiletto heel put the wiggle in Marilyn Monroe’s walk: it was so teetering that it gave women’s hips a mesmerisingly seductive sway.

In our time of amplified bosoms, liposuction and Botox, pretty feet are the one thing that can’t be faked. Male-to-female transsexuals can get it all chopped off, but they’re still stuck with those big, bony feet. Today’s ultra-high heels are unforgivingly candid about legs, too – showing off great ones and cruelly exposing thick ankles and knock knees.

Height does indeed equal power in a man’s world – which is how shrimpy Napoleon’s name ended up on a complex. I don’t blame women for boosting their height – it’s a shrewd social strategy to see and be seen. But long-term mutilation of a crucial body part is inevitable for the compulsive fashionista.

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