Every fairy tale needs a shoe that gives its wearer away, and long before Anthony Vaccarello got involved, Cinderella’s glass slipper set the original impossible standard, a shoe so clear it revealed exactly who was hiding inside it. Saint Laurent‘s new TPU pumps and mules chase that same fantasy with rather more practical footwear, swapping enchanted glass for a flexible, shatterproof plastic that has quietly circled fashion for decades before finally landing, this season, as the house’s most talked-about accessory.
A Material That Took Its Time
Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello Sabrina Mules, $ 1.600
Clear shoes have hovered at the edges of fashion for almost seventy years without ever quite settling into the mainstream. Beth Levine, the design half of Herbert Levine Inc. and one of the most inventive shoemakers of the mid-century, cast a vinyl pump back in the late 1950s that let the foot show clean through, marketed as an “invisible” shoe for women who wanted the gown to do the talking. The material resurfaced decades later in a far less rarefied form, as the jelly sandals every kid on a summer vacation seemed to own, cheap and colorful and only accidentally chic. Clear PVC then spent a long stretch associated with exotic dance and going-out platforms, a lineage the red carpet has quietly borrowed back whenever a star wanted a shoe that photographs as pure leg, from Ciara to Mindy Kaling in Christian Louboutin. What Saint Laurent has done this season is take that same unglamorous material and hand it an entirely different job, structure instead of spectacle.
Vaccarello’s Version Has Architecture
Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello Brigitte Décolleté, $ 3.950
The Décolleté Folie stretches the house’s signature elongated pump into full transparency, a sharp toe and a needle heel rendered almost entirely in TPU so the foot appears to float inside its own shoe. The Sabrina mule takes the same idea and loosens it, an open-back slide built for anyone who wants the effect without the commitment of a closed heel. The most convincing argument, though, is the Décolleté Brigitte, which tempers all that transparency with a cap toe and heel trim in python leather, a reptilian detail that turned up everywhere from Roberto Cavalli to Bottega Veneta this season and gives the eye something solid to land on. Daisy Edgar-Jones wore a pair on the circuit, translucent brown TPU offset by that same snake print, paired with a sheer lace skirt for exactly the kind of office siren mood Vaccarello has been building his whole tenure around. The idea proved sturdy enough that Saint Laurent carried it straight into menswear the following season, clear lace-ups and oxfords that Vaccarello has said only really work barefoot, since socks would rather defeat the purpose.
