Platform Sneakers

While a wide variety of styles were popular during this period, including boots, espadrilles, oxfords, sneakers, and both dressy and casual sandals of all description, with soles made of wood, cork, or synthetic materials, the most popular style of the late 1960s and early 1970s was a simple quarter-strap sandal with light tan water buffalo-hide straps (which darkened with age), on a beige suede-wrapped cork wedge-heel platform sole. These were originally introduced under the brand name, "Kork-Ease," but the extreme popularity (perhaps fueled by their light weight and soft leather) supported many imitators. Remarkably, even including all of the knock-offs, and given that they are said to have never been formally designed there was very little variation in style, and most of that variation was limited to differences in height.
In February 2006, a Texas-based company opened a website, claiming to be the legitimate successor to the original Kork-Ease company. Their site claims that the original company had been founded in 1953, implying further that their platform sandals also originated in 1953. This is somewhat suspect: aside from being less than entirely consistent with Linda O'Keeffe's book, Shoes : A Celebration of Pumps, Sandals, Slippers & More (New York: Workman, 1996), pp 388–9, it further implies that the footgear in question was introduced just as the last gasps of the brief 1930s and 1940s platform shoe fads were waning, survived for a decade and a half in almost complete obscurity, then rocketed to ubiquity at the beginning of the 1967 platform fad, only to be forced into obscurity, and near-total extinction by successive waves of the fad by the late 1970s.
As the fad progressed, manufacturers like Candie's stretched the envelope of what was considered too outrageous to wear, while others, like Famolare and Cherokee of California, introduced "comfort" platforms, designed to combine the added height of platforms with the support and comfort of sneakers, or even orthopedic shoes, and by the time the fad finally fizzled in the late 1980s, girls and women of all ages were wearing them. It may also be a by-product of this fad that Scandinavian clogs, which were considered rather outrageous themselves in the late 1960s and early 1970s, had become "classic" by the 1980s.
Vivienne Westwood, the UK fashion designer, re-introduced the high heeled platform shoe into high-fashion in the early 1990s; it was while wearing a pair with five inch platforms and nine inch heels that the super model, Naomi Campbell, took a tumble on the catwalk or runway at a fashion show. However they did not catch on quickly and platform shoes only began to resurface in mainstream fashion in the late 1990s, thanks in part to the UK band the Spice Girls, whose members were known for performing in large shoes.