In the Nineties, the kitten heel was top cat. Women could run for buses, walk up stairs and negotiate cobbles with impunity in Christian Louboutin Long Boots.
Then, in 2003, an East End cobbler by the name of Terry de
Havilland, who had made his name in the Seventies designing platform
boots for Roxy Music and David Bowie, was asked by a distraught stylist
to come up with something exciting for the models to wear in a
lack-lustre FrostFrench catwalk show.
The platform shoe was back. Miuccia Prada saw it, came up with her
own version in her next Miu Miu collection, and the rest is history.

Art: Alexander McQueen’s ‘fairy shoes’ were quickly adopted by Lady Gaga
The shoe became ever higher, ever more elaborate and ever more extreme as designers realised its potential as a moneyspinner.
Christian Louboutin gave
us the first 8in heel, while Antonio Berardi came up with a vertiginous
boot with no heel at all. The shoe boot was born, along with its
chillier cousin, the peep-toe shoe boot.
The bondage sandal cut off all blood supply to our toes, while women
the world over developed health problems due to their addiction to the
high heel: curvature of the spine, bunions, broken ankles and that
scourge of the fashion victim, the blister.
The shoe reached its zenith at the end of this year when Alexander
McQueen came up with the 12in spangled shoe boot, quickly adopted by
Lady Gaga, the decade’s most fashion-friendly star.