Recently, it seems one thing — or pair of things, with ten digits — has occupied the minds of fashion designers more than anything else: our feet.
This week, at the men’s Summer 2027 Saint Laurent show in Paris, creative director Anthony Vaccarello showed a collection of quiet perversity disrupted by a starling pair of foot-baring shoes. A lovely slate blue suit, with fluid trousers and a boxy, 80s-inspired jacket that would make any Bret Easton Ellis antihero proud, ended with a deviant surprise: a pair of clear vinyl oxfords. The French capital is in the midst of a heat wave — the day of the show was the city’s hottest ever June day, until Wednesday eclipsed it — and the model’s toes steamed inside the oblong footwear. Several more riffs followed, in accordion folder brown and another-day-at-the-office taupe, their corporate colors merging with the tailored looks to conjure a cubicle siren mood. And the notoriously unbreathable material, combined with the stuffy weather, created unsettling clouds of pedal condensation on the shoes’ uppers.
The foot play wasn’t just on the runway. “Heated Rivalry” star Connor Storrie attended the show in a black vinyl trench coat, which he mercifully removed to reveal a tank top and shorts — and a pair of knee-high latex leather boots.
