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. Ultimate babe and vintage collector Danielle Zhang stomped around Rome this past week in a baby pink V-Soul pair. “Felt like walking for the first time,” says Zhang. “I safely felt like I could engage with the earth’s surface as it was intended to be.” She also sent me a video of her travel buddy wearing a pair, valiantly riding an electric scooter, and then falling off of it. “The girls on my trip have been trying them and feel invincible in them!” she jokingly added. SSENSE, who has touched down in Copenhagen for Fashion Week, cameoed a showgoer in full-coverage Vibram FiveFingers among a sea of white socks and loafers on their Instagram.
Recently, I myself bought a V-Soul iteration in black. The shoes are dainty, light as a feather, and have an elegant thin strap that cuts across the top of the foot. (Someone described them as “delicate”) Though, I’m not an original! On Instagram, I spotted ever-chic Melissa Bon, who I met on a Ganni trip in Denmark, strolling around Paris in a black pair. “This shoe is officially my second skin,” she wrote in her caption, flexing her vulcanized rubber-clad feet, accessorized with a few silver anklets. (She also holds a deep green Kelly bag!) “To me, the FiveFinger from Vibram is the best shoe ever created. I struggled my entire life to find a shoe that combines simplicity yet singularity, strong-looking, and extra comfort,” Bon later wrote to me on Instagram. “It gives such a nice foot shape, and funny enough, I find them super sexy. I feel like I have way less knee and back pain since I started wearing them every day for the past two months.”
It’s not the first time that Vibram FiveFingers have made an impact in the fashion-verse. For Vogue.com, I wrote about the prediction of toe shoes thanks to an image by the now-defunct Instagram account /@crimesagainstshoemanity in conjunction with Céline and Y/Project, who both dabbled in the full-frontal phalanx craze a few seasons before. Later, I wrote again about the rise of toe-minded footwear using Loewe as the peg. (There’s a theme here: I’m sick). But hear me out: At the time, creative director Jonathan Anderson posted a print of a cartoon man guzzling a toe on the brand’s Instagram. Soon after, he released trompe l’oeil needlepoint shoes of clompy feet with French pedicures and toe rings. Loewe later produced an anatomical brown leather loafer. MM6 Maison Margiela had added a few more toes to their tabis in a leather glove mule. And even before these big toe moments, Céline showed skin-suit style toe-polish pumps from Spring 2013. Fast forward, over the past few seasons, Schiaparelli has been creating sneakers, heels, and platforms with surrealist gilded toes, each nail filed and cuticle cut. (Note: Kylie Jenner wore a nude version of the heel after the Schiaparelli show last September).
The biggest Vibram FiveFingers moment came in fall 2020 when Balenciaga, purveyor of uggo-chic, created a pair of Vibram FiveFingers boots with a hulking heel. Rihanna then stepped out in them, wearing them with Vetements trackpants and a yellow Sacai puffer. The then-office guinea pig, I called in a pair and took them for a test drive, and wrote how I felt about the raunchy things. I initially wrote: “My feet felt animalistic, like I was a newborn deer trying to find balance,” but ultimately, I loved how they looked…something about the foot being defined…the cradling of each itty bitty little toe. Gross! But…erotic!
There are also Japanese designers and brands that have long been working with Vibram FiveFingers in a daywear sense. (The split-toe Tabi, after all, does originate in Japan.) The brand Suicoke has truly been the most passionate in the FiveFinger universe with several designs and collaborations. There is also Doublet, which churned out a hosiery lace style with Suicoke. TAKAHIROMIYASHITATheSoloist x Suicoke Vibram has released a riff on a lace-up sneaker. The brand Midorikawa has put a spin on the Suicoke x Vibram’s FiveFingers pairs by adding fur or painting the toenails red. (A Highsnobiety article called the latter “upsetting” smack dab in the title).
Now, we are on the streets of New York, Copenhagen, Paris, and beyond, where the most basic versions of Vibram FiveFingers are rearing their heels, marking an incredible moment for the world of ugly shoes. Is this simply a progression of gorpcore? And this is the last foul manifestation of the for-the-elements garb? (Someone, please tell me what comes after the FiveFingers. SixFingers?!) Maybe there was a patient zero-fashion girl whose outdoorsy boyfriend convinced her of the benefits of Vibram FiveFingers? (Nicolaia, I’m looking at you!) Perhaps the FiveFingers craze is but a mutation of the forever hoof for fashion girls, the Margiela Tabi? (“If every gallerina below 14th can show up to work in Tabis, why not stand out with even more toe separation?” says Rips.) And even beyond the toe shoes, I’ve been being fed their less offensive cousins: pairs of rubbery ballet-style Puma and Adidas flats from the early ’00s that are getting scooped up on resale platforms.
However, let’s not forget the original non-fashion intention behind the shoes. Robert Fliri, a student at the design school Bolzano in Italy, created the flexible footwear to truly be one with nature and exist in man’s primal foot, land-latching state! In an interview with the Association of Body Conscious Design in 2006 with Nelleke Don and Jader Tolja, he spoke about the shoe’s design. When Fliri was biking or walking to a mountain, he’d tried to walk on it barefoot for about 10 minutes but then felt uncomfortable: he had no hard skin or calluses on his feet. Tasked with a “sport as a leisure” assignment from his professor, he began to design the shoes. He experimented with tights but then created more of a glove design, which is what we have today. The result? “It is very joyful to move around on the fivefingers, you will become really happy to move,” he said.
Fliri has a point about the joy component. Last weekend (yes, in the food co-op section of Brooklyn), I wore my pair to get coffee, and with every step, it was like the ground was sending delightful little shocks of euphoria up through my soles. It’s like there are embedded toe-corrector socks in the shoes, which, if you’ve ever tried, are a cocooning pleasure chest for the foot.
While I was having coffee, I also was sitting next to a trio of professional cyclists, and as one got up, he complimented my FiveFingers. The jacked man, decked out in gear, said his feet grew stronger after trail running in them. (He also said “wider,” which freaked me out.) I’m unsure about the comment about muscle growth as there is a controversy, plus a lawsuit, regarding the actual health benefit claims of the shoes. Though as someone whose toes are perpetually soldered to a stubby kitten heel, the Vibram FiveFingers have indeed felt like nirvana has kissed my tired, mangled feet.
Unlike the cyclist, I don’t plan on running in the shoes, but I intend to sport them casually. (I think styling the extremity-leaning shoes with cargos is my best bet. I wore them with jeans and looked like an off-duty Elizabeth Holmes. Tips are welcome!) I feel that casual Vibram FiveFingers may follow in the runway footsteps of other ugly shoe phenomenons like Simone Rocha and Balenciaga with Crocs, Y/Project with Uggs, and Tevas with Chloé. Maybe we will see a Vibram FiveFingers collaboration with Sandy Liang. Maybe Collina Strada. Perhaps Batsheva. Tory Burch? Hell, I’d give my right pinky toe to see that link up.
Also, a vintage bonus from the DailyMail from 2018!
began the newsletter repulsed, finished the newsletter intrigued
My boyfriend used to chase me around the apartment threatening to pinch me with his toes whenever he wore his pair; I was utterly repulsed!! But I think I owe him an apology because I have been tempted to snag a pair myself for a couple months now........ a horrifying development.