Susy is six feet two inches tall, but she blames it on a misprint. The fashion catalogue said the platform shoes had “six centimetre” heels when it meant “six inches”, she explains, lurching across the room. But Susy isn’t going to send them back, she says they’re comfortable - not for walking, obviously, but they are comfy, even if she has to take them off after an hour of sitting down.
What she means is she likes them. Susy is ruled by the “peacock gene”, the one that has people strutting and wincing along life’s uneven pavement. It would be a lie to tell her that heel height, like life, is not a competition, and pointless to mention that, as far as feet are concerned, platforms are a monumental blunder.
They can put strain on the leg muscles and cause sprains, fractures, back injuries, arthritis, bunions, and embarrassment when you fall over. Researchers from St Barnabas Clinic, in Oxford, last year estimated that three out of four women risked serious foot problems by the time they were in their sixties. And, in 1998, 10,000 people were admitted to casualty departments as a result of accidents caused by their shoes.
Platforms are not new. Between 1400 and 1600, posh Venetian women wore 61-centimetre-high “chopines” that required a servant to help them get around. But when the fashion strode across Europe and into England in 1670, they were banned by Oliver Cromwell.
Platforms fell out of favour for 300 years, but came back in the 1930s and have hung around ever since. Elton John, Kiss and the Bay City Rollers saw them through the 1970s, while John Travolta confesses to occasionally peeking in his closet at the ones he wore in Saturday Night Fever.
In 1993, Vogue proclaimed another revival of the platform, but made less of a fuss six years later when two young Japanese died in separate accidents caused by the shoes.
But will such stories make any difference to Susy? Probably not. In fact, I can’t even bring myself to tell her. I’d feel such a heel.
