In the pantheon of ugly shoes, only one can be the ugliest. Balenciaga made a valiant effort with the Triple S sneaker, a feat of clunky construction that looks like a prop from a Michael Bay Transformers movie. Gucci has a new bejeweled hiking boot that’s a bit Barney goes to Amangiri. Louis Vuitton’s got the Archlight sneaker (which is admittedly a chicer take on the heavy sneaker fad); Prada has its scuba shoe with Velcro straps; Christopher Kane teamed with Crocs and then Z-Coil; and Loewe is evoking the toe silhouetting of Vibram shoes with its Resort sandal. It seemed like we had finally reached the teleological end of the ugly shoe trend—and then came Dsquared2.
On the brand’s Spring 2019 runway, women sauntered out in a hybrid shoe to put all others to shame. It’s like a fantastically ugly collage of all the sneaker trends of the moment hot-glued into a wedge sandal with a little strap of PVC for extra zeitgeist-y appeal. It is everything and nothing, perhaps the trendiest shoe to ever be and the most hideous assertion of crowdsourced capitalism. And people love it.
Photo: InDigital.tv
Vogue menswear critic Luke Leitch, who was front row at the Dsquared2 show, chalks up the shoe’s probable success to its satirical take on trends. You’re not meant to take Dsquared2 designers Dean and Dan Caten’s jolie laide shoe literally, but rather as commentary on how far this strange footwear fad can go. Let’s say it has real legs, and now you can show them off in the most heinously posh shoe ever.
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This article first appeared on Vogue.com
