That’s Fashion, Sweetie: Fashion <3 Feet


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The fashion industry has always had a fascination with the physical human figure. While the industry itself is about design, creation and homage, it has birthed the world of modeling and introduced an emotional relationship between clothing and people. 

Additionally, jewelers are even obsessed with body parts. Schiaparelli famously makes brooches, headpieces and bags detailed with ears, eyes and mouths, and designed Kim Kardashian’s green ab piece for Christmas in 2020. Likewise, EYEBA makes simple jewelry out of plastic eyes; their necklaces often have hands delicately holding pearls, crystals, or another hand; and there are rings that look as if the finger itself was cast in silver or gold as seen through face molding jeweler @fangophilia on Instagram. 

While the fetishization of feet has been a joke amongst me and my friends, it seems that many houses in the industry that I love and adore also have a love for feet — both human and animal.

One obvious example is the Margiela Tabis. Maison Margiela drew inspiration from the Japanese worker shoes and initially started his Tabi collection with just socks that featured a split-toe design.However, the publicly nicknamed “horse shoes” or “toe shoes” eventually became a staple in his Maison, launching Mary-Janes, flats, boots, loafers, sneakers and even mittens. While this design isn’t foreign to me — as I was born and raised in Tokyo — the public consensus is very evidently split between burning hate and intense love for the style. 

This uber distinct big toe separation resurfaced in Y/Project’s semi-recent SS19 collection, in which all but the big toe were left exposed, or the opposite. 

Another famous brand that played with the concept of feet in its footwear is Vivienne Westwood. While not as obvious as the Tabis, the heels have a subtle emphasis on the outline of four toes instead of five — more animal than human. The soft outlines from its FW09 collection were also seen again in their bondage-boot style with loud and visually heavy buckles and straps, ultimately softening the toes even more. But since the subtlety didn’t spark as much opinion as the Tabis, the style was ultimately discontinued and only remains in the singular collection that launched the design. 

A similar design to Vivienne Westwood is the new Balenciaga toe boots. Following suit in the subtle toe outline, the main difference is that Balenciaga included all five toes and appropriately named the shoe style “FETISH.” The silhouette is actually very similar to Celine’s recent SS13 heel under Phoebe Philo, if you are more familiar with that, but is all black instead of Celine’s painted toes. (Fun fact, Monaco’s Princess Caroline wore these Celine shoes).

Coming back to Schiaparelli, a Parisian fashion house, it has been following a similar design to the fingernail jewelry mentioned earlier, but this time, on toes. Its 2021 couture collection launched a series of different shoes — sandals, heels, wedges, boots — that cast each toe in gold. This didn’t explode in the fashion world. Since Schiaparelli is famous for its emphasis and recreation of feet and other body parts, Schiaparelli was just deemed another beautiful creation by Daniel Roseberry. 

The weirdest style for me easily goes to  the semi-iconic Balenciaga x Vibram split-toe rubber-bottomed heels. It sent the fashion world into a frenzy  as people attempted to decide if the design was avant-garde and fresh, or too similar to a less fashionable heel attached to the rock-climbing  shoe type. 

While the rubber bottom wasn’t the main concern for the latter interpretation, as the rubber sole is a staple in many of their shoe designs, it was instead, as expected, the incredibly distinct separation of each toe. Having tried it on myself, it is a weird feeling, and almost as if my toes were a little too spread apart. Not to mention, when you forget you are wearing them, looking down and seeing each one of your toes is very strange. 

Those were just the standouts from my extensive research that led me down an enthralling rabbit hole of footwear from past and current collections — I am obviously missing many more toes in footwear. It’s odd that an industry as precise as fashion can be so enthralled with features such as feet and irises. 

But I believe this is what makes fashion fun. It’s about finding new boundaries to push  and continuing to dance the pas de deux between old and new. With the push and pull of the disrupted trend cycle and continued variation in the economy and price ranges, it will be fascinating to keep seeing which cuts, styles and silhouettes will stay and which will take their final bow. 

Hadyn Phillips is a freshman writing about fashion in the 21st century, specifically spotlighting students and popular controversy. Her column, “That’s Fashion, Sweetie,” typically runs every other Monday.