The dubious future of heeled sneakers

The challenge having been launched, the Sneex immediately caught the attention of many fashion journalists, including Taylore Scarabelli of The Cut. “It’s almost as if women of a certain age are destined to be punished for their vanity, clashing with those beauty standards we once so desperately chased,” writes the fashion editor, referring to the inevitable compromise that wearing stilettos entails. However, this phenomenon seems to persist even with the Sneex: Blakely’s shoe sacrifices some of the aesthetic qualities of the stiletto in favor of practicality, resulting in a hybrid and unconventional appearance that, since the days of the Bekett, has divided the fashion system’s audience. The unconventional heeled shoe model began making its way into the international street style scene starting in the 2000s, a few years before Isabel Marant launched her Bekett in 2011. In the years of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, fashion was maximalist and eccentric, favoring bold personalizations, signatures, and visible logos. Two of the first brands to step into this relatively unexplored universe were Manolo Blahnik and Prada: the former with the Oklamods, and the latter with the Bubble Sole. Inspired by Timberlands and made famous by Jennifer Lopez in the 2002 music video All I Have, Blahnik’s boots began to challenge the stereotype of the "sexy" shoe, although they did not yet express comfort, while Prada’s rubber-soled heels, shown on the FW99 runway, foreshadowed a movement that only started to take hold seriously in recent years. 

Bonnetje

Ottolinger

Dior

Balenciaga

Today, the importance of cross-contamination and dialogue between different areas of fashion is more relevant than ever. It is no surprise, then, to see the return of bold experiments like sports shoes with heels. Among the brands and designers representing this aesthetic is Ancuta Sarca, a London-based designer known for her entrepreneurial spirit, who in several collections and collaborations has created sports shoes given new life with a stiletto heel. In the same vein, Ottolinger, a brand founded by Christa Bösch and Cosima Gadient, shook the internet this year with a model of elevated sneakers reminiscent of Marant’s Bekett from 2011. 

Other brands that have followed the trend include Dior, which introduced the D-Zenith boot with an integrated sock decorated with a gold heel and equipped its boxing shoes with a very lightweight heel resembling a sneaker sole for the SS25 collection, Balenciaga, which created a sock-boot with a stiletto heel, and finally, Isabel Marant, who, in a nostalgic nod to the years when her brand reached exceptional heights, has revived the wedge sneaker with Velcro closure. This season, only Comme des Garçons and Noir Kei Ninomiya have brought something similar to the runway: the former in the form of Chelsea boots with a massive technical platform sole, and the latter through a collaboration with Reebok. Elsewhere, fashion's conservative currents have driven designers to stay classic with their heels, at most transforming them into flip-flops.

Some are embracing the sneaker-heel trend as a true exercise in style. This is the case with independent Danish brands Bonnetje and MASCULINA, who at the exhibition organized by GANNI “FUTURE, TALENT, FABRICS” reimagined the New Balance T500. Bonnetje transformed the shoe into a stiletto with an internal spotted sole and a yellow sporty tongue, while MASCULINA created a multicolored sneaker with a platform and leopard print details. More than twenty years after Prada’s Bubble Sole, heeled sneakers continue to divide the fashion industry, torn between the allure of functionality and the appeal of conventional elegance. To understand what the future holds for this divisive shoe, we will have to wait for the consumers' response to Spanx’s Sneex. Flip or flop?