Platform shoes are shoes, boots, sandals, even slippers or flip-flops with a thick sole, usually in the range of . Platform shoes may also be high heels, in which case the heel is raised significantly higher than the ball of the foot. Extreme heights, of both the sole and heel, can be found in fetish footwear such as ballet boots, where the sole may be up to high and the heels up to or more. The sole of a platform shoe can have a continuous uniform thickness, have a wedge, a separate block or a stiletto heel. Raising the ankle increases the risk of a sprained ankle.
History Platform shoes are known in many cultures. The most famous predecessor of platform shoes are the Zoccoli in Venice of the 15th century, designed with the functional goal of avoiding wet feet when the pavements were flooded. Depending on the current shoe fashion, platform shoes are more or less popular. In the 1970s they were widespread in both genders in Europe. Today, they are preferred by women.
Ancient
After their use in Ancient Greece for raising the height of important characters in the Greek theatre and their similar use by high-born prostitutes or courtesans in London in the sixteenth century, platform shoes, called pattens, are thought to have been worn in Europe in the eighteenth century to avoid the muck of urban streets. Of the same practical origins are Japanese geta. There may also be a connection to the buskins of Ancient Rome, which frequently had very thick soles to give added height to the wearer. Another example of a platform shoe that functioned as protection from dirt and grime is the Okobo- "Okobo" referring to the sound that the wooden shoe makes when walking. Dating back to 18th century Japan, the Okobo was worn by maikos, or geishas, during their apprenticeships. Similar to the Okobo, wooden Kabkabs were named after the sound they made upon marble flooring. Worn by Lebanese women between the 14th and 17th centuries, the straps were often made from velvet, leather, or silk while the wooden stilts were decorated with silver or pearl. The ancient Indian Paduka, which translates to footprints of the Gods, was often sported by the upper echelon as a way to mark their status. The wooden platforms were sometimes carved into different animal shapes and decorated with ivory and silver.“The History of Platform Heels.” Fabulous Platform Shoes, fabulousplatformshoes.com/the-history-of-platform-heels. In ancient China, men wore black boots with very thick soles made from layers of white cloths. This style of boots is often worn today onstage for Peking opera. During the Qing dynasty, aristocratic Manchu women wore a form of platform known as the flowerpot shoe to imitate the gait of Han women with bound feet and their lotus shoes.
Modern Platform shoes enjoyed some popularity in the United States, Europe and the UK from the 1930s to the 1950s but not nearly to the extent of their popularity from the 1960s to the 1980s.
20th century 1930s-1950s
In the early 1930s, Moshe (Morris) Kimel designed the first modern version of the platform shoe for actress Marlene Dietrich. Kimel, a Jew, escaped Berlin, Germany, and settled in the United States with his family in 1939 and opened the Kimel shoe factory in Los Angeles. The design soon became very popular amongst Beverly Hills elite.
By 1936, Salvatore Ferragamo was producing a variety of platforms of multiple heights and extensive ornamentation, including platforms paved in mirror-shiny metallic gold tiles. Some of his platforms featured soles that allowed the footbed to bend more naturally with each step because they were constructed of two separate blocks of wood or cork, one attached under the ball of the foot and one attached immediately behind that moved away from the other as the foot flexed while walking.
In the summer of 1937, high, cork-soled platform shoes became popular at European resorts and would influence footwear for the next few years. In the final two years of the 1930s, an array of platform shoe styles proliferated and could be seen in fashion magazines and popular periodicals: platform sandals, platform clogs, high platforms, low platforms, cut-out platforms, platforms with elevated heels, platforms where the foot sits flat, wooden platforms, platforms with separate heels, platforms with continuous wedge heels (a Ferragamo invention), lavishly decorated platforms, platforms with contoured bottoms sometimes called rocker bottoms for ease of walking, platforms with sunken foot beds to better hold the sole on the foot and keep the toes from protruding, even platforms with battery-operated flashing lights in their wedge heels. Many of the platform soles were so thin that they might not even be considered platforms by the standards of later decades but they were called that at the time. Others were as high as any from the 1970s and sometimes more impractical in being tapered and sculpted.
Prominent designers and manufacturers included Ferragamo, Perugia, who designed for Schiaparelli, and Delman, who employed Roger Vivier. Designers found that the platform sole offered an enlarged canvas for the addition of color and texture. The public soon learned that platform soles cushioned the foot and protected it from puddles and sand. American Vogue opined that some of the shoes looked "clumsy" but encouraged their adoption, particularly for streetwear, emphasizing their comfort and practicality compared to more delicate high heels. The diversity of styles available contributed to a surge in popularity during the late 1930s, with Life magazine estimating in 1939 that platforms made up fifteen percent of current footwear sold.
In 1938, The Rainbow was a platform sandal designed by famous shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo. “The Rainbow” was created and was the first instance of the platform shoe returning in modern days in the West. The platform sandal was designed for Judy Garland, an American singer, actress, and vaudevillian. This shoe was a tribute to Judy Garland's signature song “Over the Rainbow” performed in the Wizard of Oz in 1939. The shoe was crafted using uniquely shaped slabs of cork that were covered in suede to build up the wedge and gold kidskin was used for the straps. His creation was a result of experimentations with new materials because of wartime rationing during World War II. Traditionally heels were built up with leather, but because of the rationing of leather, he experimented with wood and cork DeMello, M. (2009). Feet and footwear: A cultural encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press/ABC-CLIO. The colors and design of this shoe still resemble modern shoe standards today.
Platform shoes continued to grow in popularity into the 1940s, their cork, wood, or plastic soles conforming to World War II material restrictions and the wartime need for practicality. The tighter the material restrictions, as in the UK, the rarer and lower were the platforms. In Nazi-occupied Paris, however, French women wore very high, very elaborate platform shoes in defiance of Nazi control and celebratory platforms were produced when Paris was liberated from the Nazis in 1944. Designers even worked on glow-in-the-dark platforms for use during blackouts.
In the 1940s, platforms were designed with a high arch, but as exemplified here, they originated with the heel elevated only slightly above the toes. The platform brings a heavy looking foundation to the wearer that is in direct polarity to the stiletto heel. With its reconfiguration of the arch and structure of attenuated insubstantiality, the high heel suggests the anti-gravitational effect of the dancer en pointe. On the contrary, the platform displays weightiness more like the flat steps of modern dance.
Platform shoes remained popular after the end of World War II, but Christian Dior's transformative 1947 "Corolle" collection directed the wearer toward a different fashion silhouette that did not include high platform shoes, and it was this look that would dominate the 1950s. A very low platform was sometimes seen during the late 1940s and early 1950s, especially on high-heeled sandals, but by the mid-fifties, these were gone, aided by cobblers who offered platform-removal services.
In the 1950s, platform shoes were not favored in the same way that they used to be. Fashion returned to the more elegantly shaped shoe.
1960s and 1970s A resurgence of interest in platform shoes in fashion began as early as 1967, when Roger Vivier produced a variety of footwear, including sandals and boots, with platform soles for Yves Saint Laurent's spring and fall collections.Multiple sources: Two years later, other designers and mass-market manufacturers had thickened the soles of their shoes as the trend took off. By the year 1970, women's platform shoes were appearing in both advertisements and articles in issues of Seventeen magazine.
Platform shoes peaked in designer endorsement and public popularity in the early 1970s and were available in a myriad of styles: clogs, sandals, pumps, oxfords, moccasins, espadrilles, slides, thongs, boots, etc, with platforms ranging in height from very low to many inches high. Heels could lie even with the ball of the foot (flat) or be elevated above the platform sole by up to four inches. The shape of platforms was almost always straight up and down, occasionally with a slight taper. Heels were always thick and chunky, whether they were separate heels from the platform sole or continuous with the sole in a wedge shape. Stiletto and spike heels were not in style at all, as they had been popular in the very out-of-style 1950s, an era associated with social backwardness at the time. Platform soles could be made out of cork, wood, crepe, rubber, or other materials and be lugged, stacked, covered, or left unadorned. Platform espadrilles were popular, their soles covered in woven jute, raffia, hemp, rope, or canvas. Handicrafts were widely enjoyed in the early seventies and some platforms were hand-painted, appliquéd, adorned with studs, or embroidered.
Occasionally seen during the early 1970s peak in interest in platform shoes was a playful 1940s-revival look, seen most famously in Yves Saint Laurent's fall 1970 and spring '71 collections, which included forties-looking platform wedge sandals with forties-style high turbans and shoulder pads. Forties platform shoes by this point were remembered as consisting of ankle straps, peep toes, and often bows on the vamp, though in reality 1940s platform shoes had been very diverse in style and shape, with many presaging popular styles of the 1970s. Other high fashion designers also showed this caricatured 1940s look occasionally during the early seventies, as did more youth-oriented clothiers like Bus Stop out of the UK.
A new addition that did not exist during the 1940s was platforms for men. During the early 1970s, men began wearing platform shoes and high, chunky heels in bold colors and materials, the larger shoes augmenting the silhouette of the wide, flared trouser hems that were the norm at the time. As with women, platforms worn under flared trousers gave an impression of length to the leg and added height. Men's platforms would be most in style and most popular during the early seventies but would continue to be seen sparingly into the mid-seventies. Male musical performers like Kiss, Slade, the New York Dolls, the Bay City Rollers, and a number of other groups, as well as their fans, commonly wore very flashy platform shoes, particularly platform boots, during this time, as did female performers like ABBA, Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac, the Runaways, and Suzi Quatro. Kiss would become associated with platform boots and continue wearing them for decades, almost throughout their career, long after they were no longer common streetwear.