Harry Styles has spent this year quietly dismantling the rules of men’s footwear, arriving at the Grammys in Dior bow mules, at the BRIT Awards in Chanel ballet flats worn with a striped Métiers d’Art suit, and on Saturday Night Live in flats again, as though the matter had been settled. What connects those choices sits underneath the novelty, since each shoe belongs to a category that has abandoned rigidity altogether. The women’s version of that idea has a name now, and the scrunch loafer has taken over the season.
The Collapsed Loafer, Explained
Sculptors have been draping fabric artfully since the fifth century before Christ, when the Greeks perfected the wet drapery technique that made marble cling and gather as though soaked through. The scrunch loafer applies the same logic to a shoe. The Row produced the version that started the conversation, cut from a glossy eel-skin leather that crinkles progressively toward the pointed toe until the structure simply dissolves. Saint Laurent followed with a variant gathered into a neat line of small pleats above a paper-thin heel, and TikTok responded with the enthusiasm it reserves for objects it fully intends to counterfeit. Miu Miu approached the idea from another angle entirely, ruching the ankle strap of a nappa leather pair so the softness of the hide becomes the entire point, gold embossed logo included.
The appeal comes down to a single contradiction handled well. A loafer is a formal shape by inheritance, having spent the better part of a century as the shoe of bankers and boarding schools, and crumpling its front end turns the whole thing slipper-adjacent while keeping the polish intact. The result belongs to that rare category of footwear that reads as considered rather than casual, whatever you happen to be wearing above it.
How to Wear the Scrunch Loafer
Tailoring remains the natural partner. A wide-leg trouser cropped just above the ankle gives the gathered leather room to be admired, and the contrast between a sharp crease and a collapsing toe box does most of the styling work unassisted. Denim performs equally well, particularly the straight or barrel cuts that have dominated the season, and the shoe survives a bare ankle in early autumn as gracefully as it handles a sheer sock once the temperature drops. Color deserves consideration, since the crumpling catches light unpredictably and a glossy black or oxblood makes the texture legible from across a room. Anything matte flattens the effect and rather defeats the purpose. The whole proposition rests on a small act of nerve, because a shoe that appears to have surrendered halfway through construction demands to be worn with total conviction. That happens to be the only styling advice Harry Styles has ever needed.
