Platforms 2.0

Platforms 2.0

River Island's sultry red wedges 70 pounds (that's money, not weight, silly)

Fashion lover and fellow actress Angela Nordeng laments about platforms: "I was really happy about the return of wedges, but I don't know how I feel about everyone walking around in stripper shoes again. I'm pretty sure that means that the flipflops with the big foam platform soles will be back next summer and I'm going to cry if that happens. I think we should explore the 80's for a little while longer.”

Platform flip-flops: can this atrocity be prevented in a community near you?

Angela's post brings up an excellent point: platform shoes have their pernicious underbelly of trashydom.  To me, good fashion is about good taste; great fashion is about the electrifying line between good taste and bad taste.  Yes, I really just made that up, and yes, I expect it to be quoted by many fashion minions in generations to come.

As dear Diana Vreeland used to say, “Bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika.”  This is why I find good-taste, always-classic fashion advice so deadly.  It’s soporific.  It’s impersonal.  It’s totally uninspired.  Do you remember all those hideous neutral "good taste" slip dresses and baggy suits from the 90s?  Aside from platform shoes and a couple other fashion items to be salvaged from the 90s, I'm also very partial to the 80s, as some people who attended my Bad Eighties birthday party last month know all too well.  My love for the 80s (a whole blog in itself) has much to do with the lovable nuttiness of the decade.  At times the 80s were supremely decadent and loud and over-the-top and excessive, but there was something exquisite in all that lunacy.

More exquisite lunacy: Alexander McQueen shoes $1,645.00

 These black platforms with gems capturing the best of several trends: gems, platforms, velvet/suede, and organic, sensuous, feminine shapes.  There's also something very witty about them.  Of course if you find these a trifle unaffordable you'll save about $600 with these:

Alexander Mcqueen shoes: only $1,050.00.  Ahhhhh.  That's better.

The black-bow detail lends the silhouette something of an illicit, corset, upmarket-erotica feeling.  I picture these shoes accompanying some very serious, military-style coat, one of those genius moments when an accessory quietly revolutionizes the entire outfit and makes you think, in the most perversely elegant way, "Hmmm, maybe she IS that kind of girl."

Back to deadly side of platforms: to keep away from Spice-Girl-Dom, usually a wise move in the fashion world, be sure your platforms are not made in a matching print to your cropped top + pants or minidress outfit; your platforms should not be carved out of foam or attached to a sneaker; and they should not, in any circumstances, ever, ever, ever, be flip-flops.