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Heels with an orb instead of a heel is a surprising design move. Placing a model of a cracked egg beneath a stiletto? That’s where fashion meets art.
English footwear designer Jonathan Anderson has accomplished just this with his new line of heels for Loewe. The brand’s latest heels shocked design enthusiasts with its surreal pump: a stiletto design where the heel breaks into a model of a cracked chicken egg, spilt yoke and all. Another design from the Loewe collection is an upside rose in place of a heel, and another heel is a bar of soap.
Anderson isn’t the only footwear designer creating these surreal heels. Other designers, like Matsui Ryosuke from Ha Za Ma, are doing it as well. In Ha Za Ma’s latest collection, a model of a manicured hand reaches around the base of the heel.
The genesis of the surreal heel trend can be attributed to Amina Muaddi and her namesake brand’s designs. Muaddi’s block heels jerked into the footwear market in 2018, and their runaway block heel design quickly became subject to copycat heels, high street–retailers could not keep them on the shelves. Variations of the search term “block heels” had gone up by 420% in Google searches from 2018 to 2019, indicating that to be copied is evidence of your success.
A torrent of arsty, sculptural heels came after Muaddi’s boundary-pushing designs. From Jacquemus’s mismatched heels to Isabel Marant’s Luam Ankle Boots, brands noticed that the average footwear customer was ready for out of the box designs. Now, the statement shoe is evolving into something more surreal than sculptural, whether that be ornate butterfly appliques on stilettos or denture-like models of teeth as heels. Surreal heels transform our perception of what a shoe can be–not just a wardrobe staple but something closer to a modern art museum artefact. It elevates high heels to collector status, making the owner the art collector. Surreal heels aren’t just a fashion statement, they’re a fashion movement.
