In the end two things made me give up heels for good. Firstly, they went completely over the top. From the mid- 2000s, designers seemed engaged in a race to produce shoes that were the most wacky and, ergo, dangerous. I hated them for what they would do to women. Alexander McQueen’s 12-inch Armadillo shoes, shown in 2010, were so extreme some models wouldn’t wear them. Then fashion gave us 23-inch shoes with no heels at all.

Secondly, my role models changed – chatting to Bella Freud at a gallery opening, I felt overdressed in heels. At shows, I was more interested by Grace Coddington’s black sneakers than her assistants’ Blahniks.

I suddenly realised cool women don’t wear heels. Stella McCartney, definitely a cool girl, said, “There is something about having the confidence to wear a shoe that is not 10 inches tall that sends a message. I think there is something modern and cool about a flat man’s shoe for a woman, a certain attitude in that masculinity and it reflects who you are and not who you are trying to be.”

Standing tall

Not all of my friends have seen the light. Last winter, I went to [London nightclub] Loulou’s with a gaggle of beautiful 20-something women, all in ultra-high Christian Louboutins. The came, they sat, and... they sat. They were able to get from taxi to sofa and that was it.

Women have been sacrificing comfort for fashion pretty much as long as shoes have been around. Before the advent of steel allowed narrow heels, women in China and Europe wore platforms, known as chopines. In the 16th century, it was aristocratic men who wore riding boots with heels to keep their feet in stirrups. Women picked up on the trend when Catherine de Medici wore heels at her wedding in 1533 and so, heels became a sign of status. Most of us didn’t take to them until Christian Dior’s New Look after World War Two.

The death of high heels: Why the flat is back