Are Valentino’s Haute Couture Platforms a Sign of the Times?
Platform shoes at the Valentino Spring 2021 haute couture presentation in Rome. Images courtesy of Valentino.
Think back to the last time it felt like platforms were truly in fashion. You’re probably picturing the late 2000s, a time when Lady Gaga shocked us with her arsenal of gravity defying shoes like the heelless Noritaka Tatehanas or the McQueen “armadillo” platforms from “Bad Romance”. And maybe you prefer not to recall the Jeffrey Campbell Lita boots or the YSL Tribtoos that inhabited far more closets than they should have.
The soaring shoes also informally cemented their place in fashion history via the numerous Youtube compilations of models falling, many of which feature the same infamous tumbles taken on the late aughts runways of Hervé Léger, Burberry, and Prada, to name a few. But what do they have in common besides their shoes? A recession, some experts have said.
"We have entered a moment of heightened impracticality in footwear," Elizabeth Semmelhack, author of "Heights of Fashion: A History of the Elevated Shoe,” told CNN in 2010. "Heel heights noticeably grew during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the oil crisis in the 1970s, and when the dotcom bubble burst in the 2000s." In the wake of the Great Recession of 2007-2009, she attributed the trend’s re-emergence to "a greater need for escapism." Trevor Davis, a consumer-products expert with IBM Global Business Services, also suggested in 2011 that “consumers look to compensate for dismal times with more flamboyant fashions.”
A period of relative practicality followed that recession, with simple single sole heels like Stuart Weitzman’s “Nudist” sandals, kitten heels, and sneakers becoming the standard in fashionable footwear for much of the 2010s. But if yesterday’s Valentino couture show is any indication, could the footwear industry soon reflect the current global recession spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic?
Like the fantastical 16 ft. long gowns of creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli’s Fall 2020 couture collection (made during lockdown in 2019), perhaps yesterday’s towering metallic, patent, and glitter platforms are providing us more of the escapism we all need. Or maybe they’re simply a reflection of just how precarious our current times are...
Watch the full Valentino Haute Couture presentation below: