Paris Rescued the Boat Shoe From Itself
Schooner savants, rejoice. Nobody’ll go hungry for a fresh rotation of boat shoes next summer. Paris Fashion Week’s mainline narrative for Spring/Summer 2027 might’ve fixated on yet another game of creative director musical chairs, but set aside the backroom whispering, look down to shoe-level, and there it was: the nautical silhouette, given a fresh spin at Loewe, Issey Miyake, Dries Van Noten, and Balenciaga.
There’s always been something charmingly repellent about the boat shoe, compared to the similar but far more suave loafer. It feels like it has a chip on its metaphorical shoulder, given its years of being bogged down by associations with Northeastern elites (and the “You know I had to do it to em” meme kid, his sockless toes crammed into brown boat shoes). But this Paris Fashion Week felt like a concerted effort to free this seafaring shoe from its bad reputation.
Loewe co-designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez’s twisty take on New England prep this season reclaimed it most directly. They gave the boat shoe a zip with brightly colored laces, then styled it with anoraks and other prep staples filtered through a more Spanish-inflected sense of drama (and all the great colorways that’ve become expected from the brand).
Less expected: Issey Miyake adding an almost perfectly ordinary boat shoe to its mix, more spiritually and visually aligned with the type seen from Margaret Howell than the freaky footwear Issey usually goes for. (See: its anatomically correct toes molded into a slip-on, like a carbonite Han Solo for the dogs.) While the offerings at Loewe and Miyake took the smooth-sailing route, Dries Van Noten and Balenciaga’s boat-friendly footwear took a more experimental turn.
Dries Van Noten’s first post-Dries creative director, Julian Klausner, went all-in on weird textures with a metallic silver heeled version offset with yellow laces, and a glossy cracked leather number that looks almost embalmed. And at Balenciaga, maybe-soon-to-be-former creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli smashed the shoe into something straight out of those hydraulic press TikToks.
Fashion brands have been tinkering with the silhouette for a while, but this season feels like the moment when the boat shoe finally found an even keel.
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