Platform Shoes

Platform shoes are shoes, boots, or sandals with thick soles, often made of cork, plastic, rubber, or wood (wooden-soled platform shoes are technically also clogs), generally worn strictly for fashion, and/or added height. They have been worn in various cultures since ancient times

Platform shoes enjoyed some popularity in the United States in the 1930s, 1940s, and very early 1950s, but not nearly to the extent of their popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, when the biggest, and most prolonged, platform shoe fad in U.S. history occurred, beginning sometime between 1969 and 1973, and lasting until sometime between 1987 and 1990. At the beginning of the fad, they were worn primarily by young women in their teens and twenties, and occasionally by younger girls, older women, and (particularly during the disco era) by young men, and although they did provide added height without nearly the discomfort of spike heels, they seem to have been worn primarily for the sake of attracting attention