Provocative? Polarising? Or just plain weird? Welcome to ugly shoe summer | Fashion

On the subject of summer season type muses, Jane Birkin in a pair of woven sandals or plimsoll sneakers strolling round Provence was as soon as the perennial reference. However change is afoot. This summer season’s greatest footwear muses embody kayakers and barefoot working fanatics.The Guardian’s journalism is unbiased. We are going to earn a fee in case you purchase one thing by way of an affiliate hyperlink. Be taught extra.Essentially the most shocking but desired sneakers in trend proper now embody rubber flip-flops, neoprene slip-on water sneakers and Vibram’s FiveFingers, a glove-like health shoe that punctuates every particular person toe.Final week, Lyst launched an inventory of the most well-liked gadgets being looked for and acquired on-line within the second quarter of 2025. Six out of the ten high gadgets had been sneakers, together with The Row’s £670 flip-flops (as worn by the Jurassic World actor Jonathan Bailey on the purple carpet), pale suede boat sneakers from Miu Miu, mesh-style jelly slippers and people aforementioned toe-pocketed sneakers from Vibram, whose followers embody the rapper Doechii and Blackpink’s Jennie.Welcome to ugly shoe summer season. Dal Chodha, a lecturer at London’s Central Saint Martins trend faculty who as a teen wore Nike Air Rift trainers that includes a break up toe, describes the pattern as “polarising”.Dal Chodain in Vivobarefoot’s Achilles sandals. {Photograph}: Chloe Mac Donnell/The Guardian“There’s a lot numbness to how we devour one another’s type at this time,” he says. “I relish the jolt of anyone going ‘what’s that?’ or seeing somebody balk.”Now, he favours Vivobarefoot’s Achilles sandals that splinter and body the large toe from the foot’s different digits. “I like when a shoe makes me query if one thing is sweet or will get me out of my very own style bubble. Ugly sneakers are provocative.”Throughout Copenhagen trend week, which wrapped up on Friday, bizarre sneakers dominated the streets and catwalks.Havaianas’ Zellerfeld flip-flops. {Photograph}: Chloe Mac Donnell/The GuardianAt OperaSport, fashions wore plastic flip-flops that had a rounded toe cap, the results of a brand new collaboration between the Brazilian model Havaianas and the 3D printing firm Zellerfeld. Rave Evaluate added tufts of deadstock materials and ribbons to pairs of track-and-field working trainers from Puma, whereas Nicklas Skovgaard styled bouncy tulle clothes with black patent heeled clogs from the orthopaedic footwear model Scholl.skip previous e-newsletter promotionSign as much as Trend StatementStyle, with substance: what’s actually trending this week, a roundup of the perfect trend journalism and your wardrobe dilemmas solvedPrivacy Discover: Newsletters might comprise information about charities, on-line adverts, and content material funded by outdoors events. For extra data see our Privateness Coverage. We use Google reCaptcha to guard our web site and the Google Privateness Coverage and Phrases of Service apply.after e-newsletter promotionChanel wellingtons. {Photograph}: Chloe Mac Donnell/The GuardianOutside the exhibits, there was every thing from battered and buckled knee-high biker boots to trekking trainers from Merrell and Eager Uneeks – a fusion of a braided sandal and canvas coach topped with a bungee wire toggle. Rubber wellingtons from Chanel, kitten heels with seen spongy insoles, embellished Crocs, ghillies-style dancing sneakers and varied cross-pollinated ballet flats together with “sneakerinas” and “jellyrinas” had been additionally in abundance.But it surely was the toe-spreading types from Vibram, which begin from £105, that had been most favoured. Fia Hamelijnck, a Dutch-based inventive director, initially purchased hers for a mountaineering vacation. Now she wears them to the grocery store, gymnasium and trend exhibits. “I can see individuals’s eyes widening as they spot them,” she says. “They’re ugly. However I like that. It’s surprising.”The catalyst of the divisive pattern will be traced again to Maison Margiela’s split-toe tabi sneakers, impressed by Fifteenth-century Japanese thong footwear and first launched in 1988. After a viral TikTok in 2023 a couple of girl’s Tinder date stealing hers, the type entered mainstream dialog. Now it’s as ubiquitous as a pair of Converse trainers.“A part of the unique attraction of a tabi-style shoe was to freak individuals out,” Choda says. “At present they don’t actually repulse any extra. So individuals wish to push that needle even additional.”Twenty years after the Italian firm Vibram first launched its barefoot types, searches for secondhand pairs on Depop are up 296% since April. Balenciaga’s Zero shoe consists of a 3D-moulded sole with a logoed large toe enclosure. Khaite’s backless mules embody a peep gap that exposes the wearer’s large toe, whereas Tory Burch sells sliders with an inbuilt steel large toe ring. On Thursday, the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami launched a variety of vibrant cutout sliders bearing his signature grinning flower motif at Selfridges.Margiela tabi sneakers. {Photograph}: Dpa Image Alliance/AlamyRuby Redstone, a trend historian and proprietor of the style retailer Mess in New York Metropolis, says “bizarre” sneakers have at all times been in trend, pointing to medieval flats with exaggerated pointed toes and elaborate French Rococo-style embellished heels as examples.After all, like magnificence, ugliness is subjective however Redstone says there was a noticeable change in how individuals classify “what a flattering or practical shoe is” with “a longing for one thing even weirder and within the know”.“Ugly is such a contentious phrase,” provides Choda. “These sort of sneakers are normally utilized by those that don’t wish to conform to tendencies and even gender norms. The irony is, they’ve now turn into a pattern in themselves.”