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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Miatta Mbriwa

Feline good: why kitten heel flip-flops are winning over flats-only gen Z

A person in a black silk dress and red strappy kitten-heel sandals walks on a street
Kitten heel flip-flops, worn here by Gili Biegun at Paris fashion week, are proving popular with gen Z. Photograph: Raimonda Kulikauskienė/Getty Images

Gen Z, the flats-only generation, has finally succumbed to the heel – albeit a tiny one. Long vocally anti-heel, the cohort who were born between 1997 and 2012 have famously shunned millennials’ obsession with Jimmy Choos in favour of pancake-flat shoes, from the Adidas Samba “It-trainer” to the split-toe Margiela Tabi and so-called “French girl ballet flats”.

But they now appear to be embracing a potential gateway heel, typically measuring in the region of 1.5in (3.8cm) or the height of a triple-A battery.

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