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Comment by pg | Hacker News Reader

They didn't. This is what cool people were wearing when I was a kid:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/113052867/vintage-mens-1970s-dex...

Where I grew up the men still wear high heels. We call them "cowboy boots".

Those are platforms rather than high heels. If you take away the thick sole (ie make it the same thickness as under the instep) and reduce the heel by the same amount, it's not that high relative to current norms.

Also, consider that while platforms were fashionable in the US during the disco era, this is a BBC article. They didn't catch on over in Europe at all. Thinking of 70s movies, I'm not sure that platforms were even that popular outside of the youth culture, and the disco culture at that, whereas high heels are ubiquitous among adult women of all ages except the very old who are unable to wear them in comfort.

They look to have as much relative heel as today's men's dress up shoes.

"They didn't catch on over in Europe at all."

Totally wrong. I was born in 1960, and at my British school if you didn't wear platforms you were laughed at. They were practically compulsory!

I was on the cusp of 30 when men were wearing platform shoes and turned 30 with the entrance of disco. I will admit that I was not fashion conscious; my girlfriend would call me fashion unconscious. Those of us in software were into hiking boots and camping in the Sierra and running shoes in the flatlands. Our girlfriends wore long hair and little makeup and never appeared in the pages of Seventeen or Cosmo. We laughed at guys in platform shoes. They were shorties trying to look tall. Annie Hall was a few years down the road but we were all moving in that direction.

They acknowledge that. From the article:

The 1960s saw a return of low heeled cowboy boots for men and some dandies strutted their stuff in platform shoes in the 1970s.

But the era of men walking around on their toes seems to be behind us. Could we ever return to an era of guys squeezing their big hairy feet into four-inch, shiny, brightly coloured high heels?

Indeed, looking at those shoes, they are much more comfortable than high heels for women. (But I would not want to wear them. At 6'3" I already am taller than I'd like...)

Yes, I saw that. But what the author doesn't acknowledge is that this counterexample invalidates his thesis. Clearly someone who read a previous draft pointed out that he was mistaken, and the author added a qualification to try to minimize the damage. But in fact it was not merely "some dandies" who wore high heels in the mid 70s. It was the default fashion for young men.

Huh -- I (born in 1958) never wore them, nor do I recall knowing anyone who did. (I do recall seeing them on TV.) Maybe it was the crowd I hung out with (prep school).

My limited memories of the time didn't have them being so popular, but I was kind of young so might not be remembering very well.

Also anigbrowl has a good point that fashions in the USA and England were different. Your memories are from the USA, the BBC is concerned with England.

I didn't see a clear thesis to the article, nor do I see how this would be a counterexample to any possible thesis of the article.

The article appeared to be primarily an expository piece on the history of heeled shoes. The thesis, if there was one, seems to be that the rise and fall of heels was driven by the whims of fashion, and that just as associations with attractiveness drove its rise again among women, associations with social status or any of the other drivers of fashion could easily drive its rise again among men. If anything, your example seems to further validate that thesis: local fashions did, in fact, get men to start wearing heels again in places.

Cowboy boots

As in earlier times, royalty (of cool) wore even more impractical shoes:

http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/k/kiss/album-destroyer.jpg

Are platforms really high heel? I mean if you shaved an inch and a half off front and back it seems to me you would have a normal height male shoe.. As opposed to the toes on the ground and a raised heel of a true high heel

Some men wore such shoes. Others wore shoes with the sole more parallel to the ground.

http://www.dressthatman.com/cat-ACCE-shoes.htm

Thankyou! Not having lived through an era does make it difficult to know these things

Surely the fact that you added "when I was a kid" implies that "they didn't" is incorrect? But yes, does seem to be (or at least have the potential to be) a cyclical trend rather than a long-term change.

that sounds about right, performance oriented shoes ended up replacing them as "cool" shoes sometime in the 80s.

http://www.liketotally80s.com/reebok-hightops.html

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