Platform fabulous as shoes go high-rise sexy

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      This spring just might be extraordinary when it comes to shoes and the women who love them. You see, now is the season of the platform-shoe fabulous.

      When platforms appeared last spring, we ogled, we touched, we hesitated. We had a wild yen to stride on sky-high inches, as confidently and coltishly as runway models. We’d clomp a tad, but we’d look fabulously leggy. But what if we fell on our asses? What if we looked like we were trying too hard? What if we looked like those guys from KISS, like Kim Jong-il, or, worse, the Spice Girls?

      Platform shoes have a long, tall history of controversy. They didn’t exactly spring whole from ’70s-era Elton John or Stevie Nicks or from the movie Saturday Night Fever. When model Naomi Campbell toppled in Vivienne Westwood platforms with five-inch soles and nine-inch heels on that catwalk in 1993, it wasn’t the first time the iconic attention-grabbers caused a commotion.

      In muddy 15th-to-17th-century Venice, courtesans and noblewomen wore platforms or chopines over their fine footwear. When ladies got 20-inch crazy, the trend was stomped out until Salvatore Ferragamo designed his breathtaking, towering cork wedges to cheer up the 1930s.

      At Aldo, circa now, things look not only cheery, but very high and very shiny. There are enough startlingly altitudinous platform shoes here to make style mavens swoon, plus Aldo’s designers have clearly taken a shine to patent leather. “Whether it’s stiletto, wood heel, or cork wedge, platform shoes are huge this year and so is patent,” confirms Aldo’s salesperson Charlene Colson.

      Hmm, time for a pop quiz. Did you know that “platform” refers not to the shoe’s heel but to the part of the sole sitting beneath the front of the foot? Meaning, even with six-inch heels, stilettos are stilettos unless there’s a front platform, in which case they’re platform stilettos—and hey, many spring styles hide that platform inside the shoe. The same rule goes for wedges, pumps, etc., meaning countless irresistible platform hybrids.

      Aldo’s platforms (to $110) have cute names like Vandyka, Firilie, and Deerpark, Aldo-speak for “insanely high”. They’ll all make legs look insanely long. And all that patent, in slingbacks, peep-toes, and snub-nosed pumps, might seem dressy, but gleaming lines, glossy colours, and ombre effects give sexy, rock ’n’ roll edge. But can we walk in them? “Because of the built-in platform, they’re a lot more comfortable than regular high-heeled shoes,” says Colson. “The cork heel is always comfortable. It absorbs the shock.” See?

      Have high-end designers gone platform-shoe wild too? Holt Renfrew, happily, is the mother lode of dazzlingly modern, exquisitely pretty, spectacularly fun designer platforms. But wait—some spring platforms have already vamoosed. “Some of the Prada and Yves Saint Laurent super-high platforms are gone. People snapped them up,” says Holt’s spokeswoman Dori Hayes. At press time, the store has one pair left of those eye-popping Balenciaga gladiator platforms seen on actor Jennifer Connelly in ads.

      Who are these women who snagged our Balenciaga platforms? Hayes says, “A lot of our platforms are pretty extreme. Some of them are amazing works of art.”¦You have to have the absolute confidence of your look and what works right now. It’s not for the wallflower. And for a lot of people, this is where they’ll spend their fashion dollars, on the seasonal thing only. It will be on a shoe.” And drop-dead-tantalizing platforms not (yet) snatched by shoe warriors? From Michael Kors, saucy, patent Melanie peep-toe wedges and retro-cool, wood-heel, snakeskin Jaden and Astor Grommet slingbacks (all $168); from Prada, ombre-patent, washed-cork Vernice slide ($530) and retro-adorable, ankle-strap tan/coral patent Vernice sandal ($750); from Yves Saint Laurent, crazy-chic Getty patent t-strap painted-cork-wedge sandal ($695); and from Chloé, Marilyn Monroe-esque wood/lucite-heel sandals ($875). All, Hayes says, complement this season’s sculptural, architectural styles, plus its “florals, flowy things, and flared legs”. Fashionistas, natch, will “just take any old thing, a pair of jeans or whatever and a platform shoe will make you look really now.”

      Down to wallet-friendly earth, at Urban Outfitters, it’s ’70s-cool Seychelles Foxy Mama peep-toe platform sandals ($90). The Gap says their platforms arrive today (April 3). BCBG has girlie-tough, metallic Nadette wood platforms ($293). At platform-king Fluevog, Kristin Tyluk explains the 10th-anniversary Body Parts platform pump ($359) with its, um, phallic-friendly heel. I never like to say what it is,” Tyluk says, amusedly. “It’s definitely a body part.” And summer platforms? “We have more coming in, with a Janis Joplin feel. A bit more Fluevog-y, a sandal. That’s the whole idea of summertime.”

      At Yaletown’s Basquiat, another notion of summertime. There, Barbara Bui platforms would have been at home in a Helmut Newton photo shoot. The black, femme fatale-worthy peep-toes ($760) mess with all preconceptions of a Mary Jane shoe. But, as Holt Renfrew’s Dori Hayes says, “There’s just more of a freeness this year. Spring is usually a fun season for fashions anyway, for summer. But this year it seems like there’s more freedom than usual.” And that is your cue.

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