Thigh-High Boots

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Won't your thighs get cold?

Shoes, usually boots, which rise knee-high or higher, often giving them Zettai Ryouiki appeal, and qualifying under its grades. These kinds of shoes have a certain Impossibly Cool Clothes factor because it is pretty uncommon, and usually pretty impractical and expensive, for shoes to reach any higher than calf length. These shoes may have straps, buckles, zippers or laces that may go all the way up, to emphasize their length and the fact that the character wearing them has some sexy legs.

Nicknamed Go-Go Boots, Thigh-High Boots tend to double as Combat Stilettos on Action Girls, though Dominatrices and Real Life prostitutes wear these rather liberally, qualifying the latter as the Ur Example, and the former as the Trope Codifier.

Compare Zettai Ryouiki and Nice Shoes; this is a subtrope of both. See Opera Gloves for the upper-limb equivalent.

Examples of Thigh-High Boots include:

Anime and Manga

Comic Books

Film

Literature

  • Several of Andre Norton's works mention spaceship crews wearing boots of a design distinctive enough that anyone seeing them knows he/she is looking at a spacer. At least once, these are stated to be fastened with buckles or latches on the thighs.

Live-Action TV

  • Avon from Blakes Seven occasionally wore a pair of leather boots that went up past mid-thigh, combined with a silver lamé top that made him look like some kind of disco space hooker.
  • Kalinda from The Good Wife pretty much lives in them.

Music

Video Games

  • Adventure Quest Worlds has plenty of this combined with leotards.
  • Luxa and the Twi'lek dancers, from Knights of the Old Republic.
  • Bloody Roar: Primal Fury: The secret boss character, Uranus, sports a sleek pair of thigh highs as part of her body armor.
  • Soul Series
    • As of Soul Calibur IV, Cassandra now sports a pair as part of her default attire. Interesting side note: it's actually her player 2 costume, from part 2, with a different color scheme.
    • Ivy as well, at least in the fifth game.
  • Also June, from Capcom's little known Star Gladiator. Not only does her outfit include thigh-highs, but killer knee pads as well!
  • Cammy's alternate outfit in Street Fighter IV, which counts as a Gendered Outfit that copies M. Bison's uniform.
  • It's practically the dominant fashion in Mortal Kombat: Kitana, Mileena, Jade, Khameleon, Skarlet, Sindel, Tanya, Sareena, Nitara, and Li Mei all wear them at some point.
  • The third Valkyria Chronicles game has Riela Marcellis.
  • Fire Emblem
    • Most of the Pegasus Knights wear those.
    • Eirika from Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones as well. In fact, looking at character artworks reveals that these are relatively common on characters in the Fire Emblem world.
  • Guilty Gear has Dizzy, I-No and Valentine.
  • Isabela from Dragon Age wears leather boots that go all the way up. Presumably, this has something to do in her being a Pirate Girl. When Isabela suggests Merrill get a similar pair, Merrill remarks that she feels like she'd get lost in those boots since they're so big.
  • Ultima Online has them as one of the standard footwear you can use. For some reason, it's compatible with plate armor leggings—the plate simply lose its graphic in favor of the boots, but still give full protection. The boots are unisex, but the female characters can combine it with corset-like torso armors and leather armor miniskirts. Oh, and you can dye the boots and the leather armor in any color you please.
  • The Succubus boss in Mabinogi.

Web Original

  • Used quite a lot in Soundscape, where Thigh-High Boots often overlap with Combat Stilettos. Half of the girls wear them, while the other half goes for actual Zettai Ryouiki or Stocking Filler. Although it's far from the Trope Namer, Amylase brutally lampshades the entire thing while explaining that she went with Thigh-High Boots as a substitute to actual stockings. Word-for-word, she describes the expensive nature in getting any boots above calf-length; the (near-)impracticality in using them for anything other than modeling; the exoticism in having laces, straps, zippers or belts to emphasize the design; their uncommon usage; the question of their origins, either from prostitutes or dominatrices; and the advantage to using them as weapons for kicking.

Western Animation

  • Evangelyne from Wakfu.
  • Starfire from the animated Teen Titans show.
  • Him from The Powerpuff Girls wears the high-heeled version of these. They do a marvelous job of adding to his creep factor.
  • From Star Wars: The Clone Wars Asajj Ventress's Nightsister attire includes these.
    • Also, Ahsoka's vision of her future self.


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