The height of fashion: Our fascination with platform shoes goes way back

Feeling shorter lately? Maybe it's because the shoe train has left the station and you're still standing on the platform rather than wearing them.

Yep, platform shoes are back.

This ain't no disco: Platform shoes date to the late 1400s, when "chopines" kept tootsies above the mud and muck of streets in Europe and Asia.

Italian style: In 15th-century Venice, women wore 30-inch-high platforms made of stacked wood or cork. If they fell in a canal, the shoes could double as flotation devices.

Shakespeare and shoes: From Hamlet: "By'r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine." Translation: "Woman, those are some wack big shoes!" This phrase eventually evolved into the fashion motto: "The higher the heels, the closer to God."

Political platform: It took an Act of Parliament to put an end to platforms in England in 1670. Women who "betray into matrimony" an Englishman by use of "scents, paints, artificial teeth, false hair ... high-heeled shoes" risked having their marriages declared null. "Your honor, I was under the impression when I proposed that she was 6 feet tall!" The women were subject to the same punishment as witches. Now, that's a fashion victim.

Stand up: The 1930s saw the platform return. Maybe women hoped to stand above the turmoil of the times. Cork was favored, in part, because rubber was needed for the war effort and couldn't be wasted on frivolous fashion.

Mod squad: Platforms went unisex in the late 1960s to '70s. They became little works of art with decorative touches, multicolored leathers and the detachable Lucite heel with a (briefly) live goldfish.

Post-punk funk: Thigh-high platform boots and platform sneakers were some of the early ironic fashion revivals.

Clogs are platforms, too: The "Klompen" shoe has been around as long as windmills in Holland. They were workman shoes. Just try to wear down a pair of wooden clogs.

They're back: From high-priced designers such as Gucci, Christian Dior and Prada to Payless, platform summer styles vary. Check out wedge platforms (the heel is higher than the toe), solid platforms (akin to walking on footstools), platform soles (a solid high heel with a platform base at the ball of the foot) and hidden platforms (the leather stretches from the body of the shoe right over the base with no visible seam).