Vintage Platform Shoes: A Fashion History

Few shoes capture the spirit of the 1970s quite like the platform. Towering soles peeping from beneath flared trousers, metallic finishes flashing beneath disco lights and gloriously extravagant boots worn by men and women alike have made platforms one of the decade’s most recognisable fashion signatures.

But platform shoes did not begin with disco.

Long before the 1970s turned them into symbols of glamour, rebellion and excess, elevated footwear had appeared in many different forms. The modern fashion platform emerged decades earlier, disappeared from the spotlight and then returned bigger, bolder and considerably more outrageous. Since then, it has repeated the trick more than once.

Platform Shoes Before the 1970s

Humans have been finding ways to add height beneath their feet for centuries. Elevated footwear has served practical purposes, communicated social status and created dramatic fashionable silhouettes in different cultures and periods. The spectacular chopines worn in Renaissance Venice are perhaps the most famous historical example, with some reaching extraordinary heights.

However, these earlier forms shouldn't simply be treated as 1970s platforms with older dates attached. The modern platform shoe has a much more recent fashion history.

One of its most important figures was Italian shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo. During the 1930s, Ferragamo experimented extensively with shoe construction and unusual materials, helping pioneer both the wedge heel and modern platform sole. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds surviving examples from the late 1930s, including elaborate platform sandals that demonstrate just how adventurous the style had already become.

Necessity encouraged some of this creativity. Materials traditionally used in luxury footwear became difficult or expensive to obtain in Italy, encouraging Ferragamo to experiment with alternatives including cork, straw and raffia. His colourful late-1930s and 1940s designs show that substantial soles could be glamorous rather than merely practical.

Other fashionable shoemakers were experimenting too. American manufacturer Delman was another innovator in introducing platform soles during the late 1930s, producing imaginative variations that split or cut away sections of the sole.

Platforms therefore had a fashionable life long before anyone paired them with bell-bottoms.

But their greatest transformation was still to come.

How Platforms Took Over the 1970s

By the early 1970s, fashion was ready to get taller.

The neatness that had characterised much mainstream fashion in earlier decades gave way to experimentation. Flared trousers grew wider, colours became stronger, prints became bolder and youth culture embraced clothes that were designed to be noticed. Platform shoes fitted perfectly into this new silhouette.

Unlike a conventional high heel, a platform raises the front of the foot as well as the heel. That allowed shoes to achieve dramatic overall height while creating a very different visual effect from the slender stiletto. Thick soles also balanced beautifully with the exaggerated proportions of flares, bell-bottoms and long, flowing clothes.

Designers pushed the idea in increasingly extravagant directions. Platforms appeared as sandals, shoes and boots, made in leather, suede and synthetics and decorated with everything from metallic finishes to glitter.

British designer Terry de Havilland became particularly associated with the glamorous platform footwear of the era; the V&A collection includes a striking pair of snakeskin platforms dating from 1972.

Crucially, the 1970s platform wasn't exclusively women's fashion.

Men embraced platforms too, particularly within glam rock and the more flamboyant corners of popular culture. Combined with flares, satin, glitter, vivid colours and theatrical stagewear, towering footwear challenged conventional ideas about how menswear was supposed to look.

Then there was disco.

As nightlife became an increasingly important fashion arena during the later 1970s, platforms seemed almost purpose-built for it. They added height, movement and drama, while metallic and glittering surfaces came alive beneath nightclub lighting.

For perhaps the first time in their modern history, platform shoes weren't simply an unusual footwear trend. They had become part of an entire cultural look.

From Disco Glamour to 1980s Decline

Fashion's greatest love affairs rarely last forever. As the 1970s ended, the enormous platform soles so closely associated with glam rock and disco began to look unmistakably tied to the decade they had defined.

The 1980s brought different footwear obsessions. Pointed court shoes, stilettos, pumps, trainers and ankle boots all competed for attention as fashion moved towards new silhouettes. The classic chunky 1970s platform no longer occupied centre stage.

That didn't mean elevated soles vanished completely. Fashion almost never works that neatly. Variations continued to appear, particularly within alternative music and subcultures, while designers periodically returned to exaggerated footwear.

But the platform's position as a mainstream fashion phenomenon had faded.

For a while, those enormous 1970s shoes became objects of nostalgia: the sort of thing that instantly evoked disco balls, flares and a decade increasingly remembered for its glorious excess.

Then the 1990s arrived — and fashion decided it wanted them back.

The 1990s Platform Revival

The platforms that returned in the 1990s weren't simply copies of their 1970s predecessors.

This time, chunky soles appeared beneath boots, sandals and trainers, fitting neatly into a decade that enthusiastically mixed retro influences with club culture, alternative fashion and exaggerated proportions.

Platforms could be playful and colourful, dark and rebellious, or deliberately cartoonish. Instead of disappearing discreetly beneath a shoe, the sole was often the feature. High fashion also took the idea to extraordinary extremes.

One of the decade's most famous examples came from Vivienne Westwood. Her towering blue mock-croc platform shoes from 1993 became notorious when a model fell while wearing them on the catwalk. The shoes survive in the V&A collection and remain an extraordinary example of just how far a designer could push the platform silhouette.

At street level, meanwhile, platform trainers and chunky shoes became part of mainstream youth fashion. Their appeal wasn't quite the same as the slinky disco glamour of the 1970s. The 1990s version could be deliberately clunky, cute, futuristic or confrontational.

And that difference is important. Every time platforms return, fashion reinvents them for a new generation rather than simply repeating the past.

Why Do Platform Shoes Keep Coming Back?

There is something wonderfully impractical about a shoe designed to make itself impossible to ignore. Platforms alter the proportions of an entire outfit. They add height, exaggerate movement and can make even relatively simple clothing look more dramatic. Perhaps more importantly, they have repeatedly become associated with moments when fashion has wanted to break its own rules.

The 1930s platform represented innovation in materials and construction. The 1970s turned it into an emblem of flamboyance and experimentation. The 1990s rediscovered its ability to look provocative, playful and deliberately exaggerated.

That history also makes genuine vintage platforms fascinating to collect — although old footwear deserves a little caution.

A pair may look pristine while the materials hidden inside the sole have deteriorated with age. Glues can fail, synthetic materials can become brittle or sticky, leather can dry and components can separate. Before wearing vintage platforms, check the soles, heel attachment, straps and uppers carefully rather than assuming that good cosmetic condition means they are structurally sound.

And if a spectacular original pair is simply too fragile to wear? There is nothing wrong with treating them as a piece of fashion history. Because few shoes tell their story quite so loudly.

From experimental 1930s designs to the outrageous heights of the 1970s and chunky revival of the 1990s, platforms have repeatedly disappeared only to stomp straight back into fashion.

They may change shape, material and attitude each time, but the appeal remains much the same.

Sometimes you don't just want a pair of shoes. Sometimes you want an entrance. 👠✨