Friends call me Uncle Fungus

(Analysis here, and français tout en bas)

The other day, at random, I stumbled upon this page which allows us to behold an authentic pair of shoes owned by Philippe, and currently preserved at the Louvres' labs. It is no surprise that the heels are fairly high, as Philippe was indeed famous for his humongous, stilt-like heels. To quote Madame de Montespan, Philippe was "very embarrassed by his small stature, and therefore had two big extra inches added to most of his heels." (😔😔😔)

As it so happens, I am currently in this mood where I feel like I need to know anything and everything I can about him, and decided, thanks to the provided measurement of the heel on the website (8,6cm), to find out his shoe size.

(measurements in centimeters)

Following the curve and shape of the shoe, I tried to approximate a foot size in it, and given the flatness of the tip that we can see on the picture, I figured the toes likely weren't reaching. This leaves us with a whopping size 4~5, or 35.5 in EU sizes.

Those weren't necessarily his highest heels either, as I saw a couple of sources bring up around 4 inches (mind you, inches were a bit bigger back in XVIIth century France; nowaday 1 inch ((pouce)) is 2,54cm, however it used to be 2,72cm)

So Philippe had tiny feet, which also concurs the contemporary descriptions of his remarkably short stature.

Now, for those, like me, who really need to know everything, how tall, or rather how short was he? We don't have a precise account, but here is the result of my findings:

Let's first list everything we know.

Philippe is described as either "short" (Saint-Simon), "very short" (Liselotte), or "princess sized" (Madame de La Fayette), which seems to indicate that he was much shorter than average if it's that visible

He was described by Liselotte as shorter than the king, who was estimated to be around 163cm (5"4) as attested by his armor (and mind you, he also wore rather high heels to make himself taller...)

The average male height in the 17th century was the lowest it ever was in France: 161cm / 5ft3 (source)

From this, combined with Philippe's shoe size (while there isn't an absolute correlation between shoe size and height, it's still indicative of a short stature), we can estimate that he was probably around 10cm/4inch below average, as any less than that is typically not very noticeable. I thus evaluate his height as approximately 151cm / 4ft11, which corroborates La Fayette's description of "princess sized" as 151 was closer to women's average height. (again, this is an estimate, it isn't proven or validated)

Of course, 151 is remarkably short for a man nowadays, but let's again keep in mind that the average height was barely 10cm above that, that Louis himself was barely taller than average, that the marquis d'Effiat was described by Saint-Simon as being of "mediocre size" (so likely around 160cm as well), and that despite being described as "tall", the Chevalier may as well have been around 168cm (5"6) that it would already have counted as such.

Anyway, so yeah, we're stanning short kings and princes here 🙌🙌🙌

(a little extra note: the reference to China is deliberate, as Philippe was very passionate about Chinese art and furniture, and was even a precursor in that regards; I thought it could be funny that he could use that as some form of excuse since nobody could really verify the information)

FR