Toe-baring footwear is no longer a novelty, it’s a full-fledged fashion statement. Photo: Auralee
Recently, when temperatures in New York City were soaring, Jalil Johnson had to put together an outfit for a business meeting and a lunch.
Johnson, a writer in Manhattan, does not have a corporate job. But he still wanted to look presentable and stylish, so he went with a dark blazer, a blue button-up shirt – and flip-flops.
“I think they look fantastic with a suit,” Johnson, 25, said.
He liked the visual contrast of wearing a blazer with beach sandals, he added, and was emboldened to dress up his flip-flops after seeing some on the runways at the recent menswear shows.
Louis Vuitton showed leather flip-flops, and Prada had models walk the runway wearing rubber-soled thongs in shades of pale blue and pistachio green.
Auralee’s show featured male and female models wearing colourful two-tone flip-flops that resembled a US$690 (approximately RM2,930) pair by the Row.
Toes also paraded down the runways at Dries Van Noten, Lemaire, Hermes and Kiko Kostadinov, where thong sandals were paired with toe socks.
All of it was a sign that menswear was jumping feet first into a trend already permeating womenswear. From luxury flip-flops to mesh flats to five-toed sneakers, lots of footwear in favour with fashionable people emphasises the digits also known as little piggies.
Read more: Menswear puts its best foot forward, as toe-baring styles step onto the runway
Liana Satenstein, 35, a fashion writer in Brooklyn, has been following the industry’s toe-forward trajectory for years.
As have publications like British Vogue, which declared in a 2023 headline: “Toes are the new legs”.
The “footaissance”, as Satenstein called it in her Neverworns newsletter, has coincided with other sartorial trends – naked dressing, short shorts – that prescribe leaving little to the imagination.
“Nothing is titillating anymore,” she said. “But there’s something so sensual about feet, from toe cleavage to the curve of an ankle.”
Unlike the curves achieved via deep-plane face-lifts and other cosmetic surgeries, those of feet and toes are usually natural – something the 63-year-old fashion designer Rick Owens recently alluded to, when he said he was starting an account for his feet on OnlyFans and described it as “an interesting way of addressing ageing”.
In her newsletter, Satenstein has written about thong heels Phoebe Philo introduced last summer (which Satenstein called a “sickeningly sexy combination of filth and chaste”); the sneaker-like Vibram FiveFingers (a “fashion girl” favourite, she wrote, and a source of “perpetual phalangeal pleasure”); and Balenciaga’s Zero shoe (a barely-there sandal that, as its name suggests, is not much of a shoe at all).
Satenstein called a leather peep-toe heel by Khaite the “freakiest” of them all.
Some new thongs nod to earlier styles, like a spangly metallic heel reissued by Jimmy Choo in May.
The shoe was introduced in 2000, when Carrie Bradshaw was running around New York in open-toe Manolo Blahniks on Sex And The City (open-toe Manolos are also a favourite of Anna Wintour).
Havaianas flip-flops, another nostalgic thong, have been worn by personalities and with collections by labels like Kallmeyer, which featured them on models in its Spring 2024 lookbook.
A pair of Yeezy heeled thongs that Kim Kardashian wore out in Los Angeles in 2018, which Satenstein wrote about for Vogue, were an early sign to her of the toe cleavage to come, she said.
The next year, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen of the Row fueled interest in showing toe with the release of their label’s nylon-mesh Sock shoe.
Since then, shoes that have sustained the interest include the cloven-toe Maison Margiela Tabis, an insider favourite.
As designers like Emme Parsons have incorporated embellishments for toes into their shoes – Parsons, who lives in Palm Beach, Florida, sells a sandal with a built-in ring – other brands have introduced jewellery to make them shine.
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One is Chan Luu, which hosted a “pedi party” at a salon in Los Angeles last month to promote a new collection of toe rings.
They include styles with hefty Swarovski crystals, which resemble a diamond ring Rihanna wore on her middle toe in 2023.
“Bigger is better,” said Tessa Tran, 37, CEO of Chan Luu.
The fashion designer Yael Aflalo’s new namesake label also sells a toe ring with a large diamond.
It was designed by Leandra Medine Cohen, the fashion writer once known as the Man Repeller, whose own toe-forward footwear includes Havaianas, corded sandals and jelly flip-flops by Ancient Greek Sandals, which she recently wore with an Emilio Pucci swimsuit and nylon surf pants.
In developing the new ring, Medine Cohen said, “We thought about a cigar band, but then we decided that an engagement-style solitaire was the most digestible and humorous.”
“Like, are you really going to put a diamond on your toe?” Medine Cohen, 36, said.
The “contrast of a very casual shoe with the ring feels right”, she added, echoing Johnson’s sentiments about wearing flip-flops and a suit jacket.
“It’s that same contrast, with a delicate piece of jewellery and a hairy toe.” – ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
