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. The Guardian's journalism is independent.
We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. "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?" Toes started titillating fashion around 2019 when hyper-luxury label the Row sent slipper socks, resembling five-denier tights chopped at the ankle, down the catwalk. The translucent gauzy view was through to the whole foot but it was the toes that were in the spotlight.
In 2022 came Alaia's £650 fishnet ballet flats, proffering a subtle peephole effect, and which still have a roving waiting list. Two years, several iterations and hundreds of fast-fashion dupes later, we're living in an age of all-out foot-digit display, from barely there ballet flats in sheer fabrics to glove-like iterations that punctuate each phalanx. Toe-exposing fashion is a risky and liminal space, the line between sensual elegance and body horror being thin.
There are translucent and embellished ballet flats, .