It used to be that the worst thing a shoe designer could do was show some toe. Controversial shoe trends were labeled as such online because they revealed more foot than they concealed—and divided the comments sections on Reddit, Instagram, and X (then known as Twitter) in the process. The earliest mesh flats had armchair critics begging shoppers to put their toes away, especially if they lived in a city. Only a narrow in-group embraced Maison Margiela's cleft-toed Tabi line when John Galliano brought it from its roots in Japan to the Western masses in 1988; the rest considered them a little too hoof-like to adopt en masse. And jelly sandals? The court of popular opinion ruled they belonged back in the 1990s.
But by mid-2024, nearly all of street style seemed united in supporting once-polarizing shoes. And Hollywood shoe-connoisseurs led the charge.
