‘An orgasmic exhale for the foot’: why fashion is falling for toe-baring styles

Schiaparelli’s Trompe-l’œil toe sandals. Photograph: Schiaparelli

So far, this year’s naked dressing trend has given us glimpses – and in some cases glaring flashes – of bellies, bums and boobs. Now, the stripped-back mood has come for a perhaps unlikely locale: toes.

“I guess it was time for toes to be ‘fashionable’,” says Helen Persson, a historian and curator of the 2015 V&A exhibition Shoes: Pleasure and Pain. “At different times, different areas of the foot have been deemed alluring, and put on display. From ‘toe cleavage’, and the inside arch of the foot, to the soft round heel in backless shoes, so why not toes themselves?”