Helen Mirren explains her decades-long obsession with ‘stripper heels’: ‘They work like magic’

Helen Mirren found red carpet confidence in a stripper shop.

The Oscar-winning actress, 80, dished on her longtime love of pole-dancing heels in a British Vogue interview from the front row at Erdem’s fall 2026 show during London Fashion Week on Sunday.

“Stripper heels is what I like, ideally,” Mirren told the outlet from her seat at Tate Britain. “In my early days in LA, you know, the awards things, and there would be all these actresses like Nicole Kidman and these beautiful, tall, thin, gorgeous actresses, and I’d be this dumpy little five-foot-four thing amongst them.”

At the time, comfortable yet sky-high heels weren’t widely available, which meant the “Queen” star had to get creative with her shopping sources.

“Platform heels were not in fashion. So the only place I could find a platform heel was in the stripper shops on Hollywood Boulevard,” she recalled. “It was $39.99, my first pair of stripper heels, and they worked like magic. Suddenly I was up there eye to eye with [five foot 11] Nicole Kidman.”

Mirren has been candid about her love of sky-high platforms for years. In 2010, she raved about the style to Woman & Home magazine, saying, “Four-inch platforms give you great height and make your legs look unbelievably long. I used only to be able to get them in stripper shops, but now you can buy them everywhere – although, unfortunately, that means everyone else has discovered the trick too.”

The Dame’s dedication to the look was immortalized in 2024, when Mattel created a Barbie doll in her likeness, modeled after her red carpet look at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023 — complete with her periwinkle Del Core gown, the matching blue hair she sported for the occasion and her signature platforms.

“Bless the Mattel team, because they got my f—k-me pump shoes right,” Mirren told British Vogue at the time. “Enormous platform Pleasers have always been my secret weapon on red carpets: they give you six inches of height on your legs, and because they’re made for strippers, they’re quite stable, too.”

At Erdem, the “1923” alum sat front row alongside fellow screen stars Glenn Close, Keira Knightley, Lily James and Rashida Jones. She took in the label’s 20th anniversary collection in a navy knit cardigan with a crocheted shawl, a white botanical-printed skirt and Mary Jane flats — leaving the Pleaser pumps at home this time.