As part of its spring couture collection at Paris Fashion Week, luxury fashion house Schiaparelli debuted a new, instantly adored line of gilded corsets, cosmos-inspired designs and dramatic black-and-white silhouettes. But each runway look was offset with a curious sartorial detail: either a pair of black pumps with gold dagger-like toenails (dubbed “claw couture” on Schiaparelli’s Instagram) or a manicured set of toenails carved into a pair of slingbacks.
Last summer, the brand’s footwear collection had a similar flourish, featuring a round toe cap with five sculptural-looking extremities dipped in gold lacquer — most recently worn by Doja Cat at the 2022 Billboard Music Awards on Sunday night.
In recent years, designers have increasingly turned to toes for inspiration. In May 2021, New York cool-girl label Khaite debuted its “Berlin slingbacks,” a pair of midi-heel sandals which cover only the wearer’s big toe. Milanese brand AVAVAV has meanwhile gone viral for its monster-like toes, from demonic-looking “claw finger” mules worn by Ezra Miller to Doja Cat’s unforgettable chicken feet thigh-highs worn to the 2021 Video Music Awards. The latest release from AVAVAV is very slimy feet—a pair of lime green, over-the-knee boots completed with four enormous toes that proved popular despite retailing for nearly $2,000.
Fashion editor Maria Bobila of Nylon magazine said in a phone interview that “designers love to take on a challenge.” They want to turn something super polarizing and ‘ugly’ into fashion, turning it into a coveted piece.
Fashion’s increased interest in exaggerating our extremities, Bobila says, is the logical endpoint of the ugly shoe trend. That obsession has catapulted Crocs and other functional footwear brands to high fashion fame in recent years through a string of designer collaborations.
But the toe trend isn’t just limited to new designs. Google Trends shows that search interest for the phrase “Maison Margiela Tabi” — a split-toe “hoof” style inspired by the Japanese tabi worker sock that debuted almost 35 years ago — jumped by 66% this April. On TikTok, a breeding ground for Gen Z fashion trends, the hashtag “tabi boots” boasts over 17 million views, while “margiela tabis” has a further 8 million. There is also a dearth of content on YouTube dedicated to unboxing these “funny camel toe shoes,” as one Gen Z creator called them.
Margiela’s Tabi boot of 1989
Margiela’s Tabi boot of 1989 was a toe-centric shoe that spawned multiple iterations by different designers. In 2000, Vivienne Westwood created “Animal Toe” mules with peach-colored digits; in 2013 Celine created a pair of alabaster-white stilettos complete with scarlet painted toenails. By 2018 Y/Project released a pointed stiletto with a cut out which exposed the big toe. It wasn’t until 2020 when Balenciaga collaborated with Vibram to release a controversial FiveFingers ankle boot that toe-centric footwear began to make headlines. The boot became popular due to Rihanna’s endorsement and went viral on social media.
Bobila said he believes that the popularity of these shoes is due to the internet culture element. “Things like toes are very polarizing,” he said. “People find them disgusting, but also it’s a fetish.” He explained that the shoes play into the memeification of toes by being so unusual and ridiculous that they become funny.
Fetish Style by Dr. Frenchy Lunning
Dr. Frenchy Lunning, a professor at Minneapolis College of Art Design and author of the fashion subculture book “Fetish Style,” agrees that Schiaparelli and AVAVAV’s designs have a distinct fetish overtone.
She said over a video call, “They’re fetishizing fetish. They’re taking the whole mystique of fetish and using it for humor and fun.”
According to Lunning, a fetish is an object that has been imbued with special meaning. “Fetishizing in the erotic is a major part of the human condition,” she said. “And so objects become charged very easily.” Fashion, she pointed out, is just the fetishization of clothing: It’s taking something and making it more meaningful somehow. Plus, looking fashionable has a sexy glimmer to it, right?
In 2015, the Victoria and Albert museum in London dedicated an entire exhibition to the idea that physical discomfort has long been an accepted payoff for dramatic and alluring footwear. “Shoes: Pleasure and Pain,” included high-status shoes dating back to antiquity, like an excruciating waifish gold-leaf papyrus sandal from Roman Egypt, worn by the elite.
Fashion has often borrowed from the fetish community, from London’s ‘SEX’ boutique opened in 1974 to Thierry Mugler’s corseted black latex looks in the 1990s. But these days, designers have been paying more attention to fetish influences than ever before — coinciding with their obsession with toes. During her 2021 MTV VMA performance, Madonna ripped open her camel Burberry trench coat to reveal a leather maid outfit and fishnets. The next day, at the Met Gala, both Evan Mock and Kim Kardashian upped the ante with full-coverage face masks. “Gossip Girl” star Mock paired a black, high-shine bondage mask with his Thom Browne suit, while Kardashian’s now-infamous outfit — a black morphe-looking-suit created by Balenciaga — featured a submissive companion crawling in-tow down the runway during Richard Quinn’s London Fashion Week show last fall. Harnesses and corsets are often first sold on the catwalk and then trickle down into more commercial retailers, with harnesses being sold at H&M and corsets anointed as one of the biggest trends of 2022.
Bobila said, “I’m seeing a wider return to fetish fashion on both the runways and the red carpet.” She also noted that Julia Fox uses her background as a former dominatrix to incorporate fetish fashion into her very public-facing outfits. An example is her front-row outfit at the Versace Fall 2022 show—an all-black latex outfit complete with floor-length latex pony.
While kinkier forms of fashion are beginning to enter the zeitgeist, the most on-trend cleavage this season is between your toes.