Gothic Shoes, Platforms and Flames
Gothic Shoes Description
Gothic shoes and boots are often platform footwear with thick soles, with big buckles and often made of cork, plastic, rubber, or wood as part of the style and for added height. Vivienne Westwood, the UK fashion designer, re-introduced the high heeled platform shoe into high-fashion in the early 1990s.
Originally, platform shoes in Ancient Greece were worn for raising the height of important characters in the Greek theatre and their similar use by high-born prostitutes or courtesans in Venice in the 16th Century. Platform shoes were also worn in Europe in the 18th century for wearers to avoid the pollution of urban streets.
Platform shoes are strongly associated with the adult entertainment industry and are commonly worn by strippers and pole and lap dancers during their performances.
Perhaps because of this, they also seem to be rather popular among young US and UK women in their teens and twenties (the same age group among which platform shoes were widely popular in the early 1970s), because they have retained the shock value that less extreme platform footgear had lost by the 1990s.
Demonia and Pleaser are associated with gothic shoes and boots.
Nurse Deisel's 7 inch Pleaser flame gothic shoes
Electra flame boots
For more information about gothic shoes, gothic hairstyles and goth, read “Step-by-Step Essential Guide to that Elusive Gothic Look & Style”.
