The French and Italians debate about who invented high-heeled fashion shoes designs but I believe they originated in China to support women with bound feet,” he said.

Dr Ko has 5,000 pairs of the tiny shoes printer worn by women with bound feet. Many of them are delicately embroidered as they were meant to attract attention to what was the main female erogenous zone – and the smaller a women’s feet, the more beautiful, and marriageable, she was considered.

He backs his claim that the three-inch (7.6cm) shoes printing are the prototype of latter-day high heels by pointing to the tiny platforms sewn to the heels of many pairs in his collection.

Eventually, bound fashion shoes designs became so normal that without them a woman could not marry. They were never shown to any male except a husband or lover.

Usually a girl was subject to the painful ritual from early childhood when her designer shoes were literally bent in half – often by her mother or another female relative.

Yet so erotic were the shoes print considered that men were known to eat crushed almonds and even sip wine from between the deformed toes, and the sight of the bindings was said to be enough to stir libidinous passions.

“The richer a woman was, the smaller her feet were bound, and for some matchmakers, their first question was about the size of the feet of prospective brides,” Dr Ko said.

While footbinding forced women to walk in an unnatural way, tottering from side to side as they struggled to maintain balance, Dr Ko said he believes it made them more attractive and sexy.

Indeed, he compares lotus feet to the tightly-laced corsets popular in Western Europe during the 18th century – despite the fact that Western women chose as adults to wear the corsets, whereas Chinese women had their feet mutilated as children. – AFP