Fashion Says Show Feet
As I said at the start of the year, the dogs are out. And boy, never have the dogs been more out. Fashion is currently drowning in a deluge of feet, which at least sounds like one of the circles of hell.
Well, not for everyone, I suppose. Because, like those people, fashion itself has a foot fetish. Too bad for the rest of us.
Even the New York Times recently said it was a great time to be a toe. Forget the toe, how about the entire foot?
Feet are currently, unfortunately, ubiquitous. We're talking flip-flop fever, a torrent of tabis, lopped-off loafers, ostensibly opaque clogs, see-through jelly shoes, and even the reclamation of the once-loathed toe shoe.
Yes, the final boss of freaky footwear is no longer verboten.
Quite the opposite in fact: Vibram's Five Fingers was one of the five hottest items of this past season and one of the most popular shoes right behind designer flip-flops and flattened boat shoes. (Of course, boat shoes fit into the picture because they're typically worn barefoot.)
It's a renaissance of the foot, an inevitable collision of much concurrent feet-ivity.
Heat around Vibram toe shoes began building just after peaking demand for netting and mesh-style shoes popularized by Alaïa and The Row. A global fixation on flat shoes lead to interest in ever flatter footwear like PUMA's super-sleek ballet flat, only just barely a sneaker in that it sorta has a sole and sorta covers the toes.
And with sneakers getting to the point that their wafer-thin soles barely keep one's foot off the ground, it was only a matter of time until even that tiny separation was eliminated.
There really is something in the air. Or, rather, on the ground. Balenciaga, house of behemoth shoes, just released one of the final shoes produced during Demna's tenure, a $500 barely-there slipper suitably called the "Zero." As Tabification sweeps the world, normalizing Margiela's signature cloven-toed shoe as a daily driver, sneaker brands like Nike and ASICS are (once again) dabbling in tabi-fied running shoes. Upstart imprints like Bravest are going viral for clogs shaped like feet and — the horror! — actual toes.
All while Rick Owens is selling feet pics on OnlyFans.
Everyone figured that they should, no one asked if they could.
What of folks who'd prefer to not see tootsies everywhere they turn? Even a well-manicured foot is still a foot and feet are gross. They touch the ground. They sweat. It's bad enough to be forced to wear sandals by extreme summer heat — now, everyone is voluntarily showing feet.
For free, no less.
And because fashion says its time to bare your toes, we'll be suffering the agony of the feet until the end of summer.
Autumn can't possibly come any sooner.
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