Salma Hayek turned 60 on September 2, 2026, and while tributes have understandably focused on her three-decade film career, her red carpet footwear deserves its own retrospective. At just over five feet tall, Hayek has spent years using dramatic platform heels as a signature styling tool, and the results have become some of the most photographed shoe moments on the fashion-week and awards-season circuit.
Much of that footwear history traces back to Gucci, a brand with personal ties to Hayek through her husband, François-Henri Pinault, chairman and CEO of Kering, Gucci's parent company. At the 2019 LACMA Art + Film Gala, she paired a sequined pink gown with black leather Gucci pumps featuring toe cutouts, a T-strap and a six-inch heel balanced by a 2.25-inch platform. A similar formula appeared at the premiere for Guillermo del Toro's "Tale of Tales," where she wore Gucci's now-collectible "Angel" platform pumps, a design from Alessandro Michele's tenure at the house, under a medieval-inspired gown.
Her 2021 Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony offered one of her most quietly elegant footwear pairings. Hayek marked receiving the industry honor, presented by Chloé Zhao and Adam Sandler, in an embellished Alexander McQueen dress with a bubble hem, finished with the kind of towering heels that have become her red carpet trademark. Her daughter, Valentina Paloma Pinault, joined her on the carpet in leather over-the-knee boots, giving the family appearance a coordinated, all-black finish.
Hayek has also shown she can move beyond platforms when a look calls for it. At the 2023 BRIT Awards in London, she swapped her usual heels for lace-up platform boots worn with a leather dress and fishnet stockings, an edgier departure from her typical red carpet silhouette. A few months later, at Balenciaga's Fall 2024 show in Los Angeles, she wore neon pink Balenciaga pumps, proving her shoe rotation extends past the brands with family ties.
2024 alone produced a run of footwear moments: silver Gucci platform heels at the European premiere of "Blink Twice" in London, black platform sandals at the Kering Foundation's dinner in New York, and light pink platform heels worn to Valentino's Pavillon des Folies show during Paris Fashion Week. The following year, at the Kering Foundation's Caring for Women dinner, she coordinated black footwear with Pinault, opting for black satin sandals with a crisscross strap at the vamp rather than her usual towering platform.
Earlier in her career, at the 2019 premiere of her Netflix series "Monarca," Hayek wore gold metallic peep-toe platform heels so tall they stayed hidden beneath her wide-leg trousers until she sat down for an interview, a detail that turned into one of the more talked-about shoe moments of that press run.
Across more than two decades of red carpets, the throughline in Hayek's shoe choices is consistency: dramatic height, sculptural detailing and a clear preference for platforms that let her hold her own next to taller co-stars and designer gowns alike. As she turns 60, that footwear archive stands as its own kind of career retrospective, one built heel by heel rather than film by film.
