by So far, this year’s trend for naked dressing has given us glimpses – and in some cases loud flashes – of bellies, bums and breasts. Now, the stripped-back mood has arrived for an unlikely locale: toes.
“I think it was time for toes to be ‘fashionable’,” says Helen Persson, historian and curator of the V&A 2015 exhibition Shoes: Pleasure and Pain. “At different times, different areas of the foot have been considered attractive and put on display. From ‘splitting the toe’, and the inner arch of the foot, to the soft round heel in backless shoes, so why not suit yourself?”
Toes started to fall out of fashion around 2019 when hyper-luxury label The Row sent slipper socks, like five denier tights cut to the ankle, down the catwalk. The gauze scene was translucent through to the entire foot but the toes were in the spotlight. 2022 saw the arrival of Alaia’s £650 fishnet ballet flats, which offered a subtle peephole effect, and still have a roving waiting list. Two years, several iterations and hundreds of fast-fashion dupes later, we live in an age of all-out digital foot display, from barely there ballet flats in sturdy fabrics to glove-like iterations that dot every phalanx.
Toe-baring fashion is a dangerous and liminal space, the line between sensual elegance and thin body horror. Ballet flats are translucent and decorated, for example the Marcy shoe from Khaite is like a mosquito net with dozens of tiny crystals and ten unsuspecting toes caught. Rubberized flats bring to mind holiday swimming shoes, while your tight plastic mesh versions can, at the end of the day, leave your toes looking like a pork loin wrapped in butcher’s net. Despite this, the semi-exposed shoe, which draws the eye to the ten digits, continues to attract.
Celebrities including Dua Lipa, Zendaya and Anne Hathaway have been shown with their toes partially exposed and, while feet were usually covered in four-inch stilettos in the front row, during the current fashion month, editors are putting them in flats to put his toes in the center of the fair. Vibram’s FiveFingers were even considered – shockingly – a style of shoe that barefoot advocates are usually able to promote. As former Vogue editor Liana Satenstein wrote in her newsletter: “Sliding your foot into Vibram FiveFingers is like the ultimate tall body that starts at the digit. Having your toes spread-eagle is a perpetual palangal pleasure, and Enya’s happiness is certain heavenly when your feet can raw grip the ground – or the pavement. Basically, the shoe is like an orgasmic exhale for the foot.”
Satisfying as they are for sharing, exposed toes are a divisive trend. One person’s podophobia is another person’s podophilia. “Anything can be dressed up, but shoes and feet are two very popular objects and body parts,” says Valerie Steele, chief curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology and author of Fetish: Fashion, Sex & Power. Steele says that the outline of the foot can be considered a miniature version of the human body. Low-cut shoes reveal a “toe gap”, and the heel is the back end of the foot. “That’s why it was very erotic to wear a slingback. You were letting your hips swing. They were called ‘fuck me’ shoes.”
Persson says that toes can play a central role in fetishism. Mesh-type shoes “frame the foot sensibly and reveal / hide the toes, it is tantalizing – like underwear.” For years, designers have riffed on toe-centric designs, most famously Maison Margiela, whose split-toe shoes are inspired by Japanese tabi socks. But perhaps today’s proliferation of phalanges can be linked to a wider mainstreaming of foot fetuses. Social media users suggest selling foot pictures as side-by-side treasure and photo-sharing site Wikifeet, dedicated to ranking celebrity trotters, gets close to 20m views a month. Even Lily Allen has been making a buck lately selling pictures of her on OnlyFans. It’s not a new interest, either. Ancient Greek sculptures and artworks such as Botticelli’s Venus pioneered the second longer toes, and Steele points out that there was a backlash in the 1930s when people started experimenting with open-toed sandals.
Steele thinks that the trend’s continued interest can be attributed to the toe being exciting. “I think a lot of the shoes we’ve seen now often play with exposed toe, or, in a sense, with toe ties or toe separation in different ways,” says Steele. “A lot of designers are trying to do unusual, extreme things, and because of that they seem so transgressive. It’s like you have to be cool to realize how cool it is.” At the less cool surrealist and grittier end of the spectrum is Russian absurdist designer Canyaon, who redecorates slides to look like one giant toe.
For those still torn about dipping their toe into the trend? Schiaparelli has its own foot fan starter pack. His high heels and sneakers are decorated with golden brass toes, as well as wrinkly metatarsophalangeal joints and painted nails.
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