New York City and Los Angeles may be hubs for fashion forward looks and individual style — but the cities’ trendy tendencies don’t necessarily include higher heels.
Based on data collected by Gilt, an online discount fashion store, the highest heels in the U.S. are actually found in Puerto Rico. The website recently revealed their findings with a “Stilettos By State” infographic on their Tech Blog.
Curious to see if “certain fashion preferences might be regional or universal,” Gilt Principal Data Scientist Igor Elbert and Data Analyst Debbie Chung looked into whether heel height varied greatly across the country.
Their findings came after the two looked at Gilt customers’ purchases in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, between January 2013 and June 2014, and highlighted the average heel heights bought in each state and territory.
The infographic below, created by Rhianon Cha-os, shows Gilt’s findings:
Puerto Rico took the top spot with an average heel height of 2.87 inches, followed by Nevada (2.72 in.), Florida (2.46 in.), and Arkansas (2.37 in.). New York didn’t even make the top ten list with an average of 2.09 inches and California came in tenth place with 2.25 inches.
Women in Nebraska, Kansas, Maine, and Vermont bought shoes with the lowest average heel height — all under 2 inches. This data, however, is only a reflection of shoe tendencies by Gilt customers and is not a proper survey of the U.S. population overall.
While Gilt didn’t present a lot of analysis with their findings, many publications have noted that there might be a correlation between heel height and whether certain states’ women do more walking in their day-to-day as opposed to driving.