I Bought the Heinous-Chic Vibram FiveFingers
We will all be FiveFingered soon. The toe shoe craze has been a long time coming.
Slipping your foot into Vibram FiveFingers is like the ultimate body high that starts at the digit. It’s a perpetual phalangeal pleasure to have your toes spread eagle, and there’s a certain heavenly Enya bliss when your feet can rawly grip the earth—or pavement. Essentially, the shoe is like an orgasmic exhale for the foot. Those little piggies can breathe; they can stretch. Sure, I’ve seen the joys of the shoe in action before. I live in a hippie section of Brooklyn, where the post-hike crunch is pungent, and there’s a retro wellness mindset that seeps through natural fiber clothes. The bizzaro shoe undoubtedly has a foothold here. But the latest craze of toe shoes goes beyond the organic cheese aisle at the local food co-op: Vibram FiveFingers have stepped out into the world in a very fashion way.
A few weeks ago, while browsing online, I found a mesh ballet toe shoe from Vibram FiveFingers. In my mind, I believed the raunchy netted shoe was a middle finger—or toe!—to the Alaïa ballet flats that the girls have been dropping $900 on. But the toe shoes don’t stop at mesh. When I posted the piece a few weeks ago, Nicolaia Rips, one of the earliest hot girl adopters of the toe shoe, sent me a darling picture of herself in her own pair that she wore with sweatpants and a T-shirt. “I wish I could claim I’ve always been on board, but last year my boyfriend (who is very stylish, yes) asked for them for his birthday (insane) with the caveat that we got matching pairs (oy),” writes Rips. “So I did! And then we wore them all over Sardinia (on and off the beach) and terrorized the Italians. I’ve found they zshush up a boring, bland ole outfit. When something might call for a ballet flat, the toe shoe, though less obvious, is more interesting.”
Now, the wriggly footwear has also been popping up on my Instagram feed, zshushing up outfits internationally.