Too big to fail, too small to notice is a series of works sparked by a small article I found in the newspaper archive of the Wall Street Journal. The article described stock-market traders in Chicago who had begun to wear platform heels at the end of the 1990s - a time when financial trading was yet to be digitised and the trading floors were crowded by shouting, wildly gesticulating macho men.
Tallness mattered in this environment, for the taller you were, the more visible - and the more visible you were… the faster you could trade. Platform heels therefore conveniently elevated a trader above the rest. Yet as more and more traders began to wear these heels, the initial advantage disappeared, spurring the traders the wear increasingly higher and higher heels. The heels eventually become so high, that accidents started to happen and the Chicago Board of Trade had to regulate the maximum heel-size to two inches.