The Curious Rise of Barefoot Fashion

Shoes, famously, shield our soles from hazardous shards and general public pavement filth. We wear them every day, secure in the knowledge that they are not frivolous accessories but necessary protective barriers. Lately, however, a new trend is afoot, and it’s all about barefoot fashion.

Some of the biggest headlines to come from Fashion Month were pegged to the absence of shoes. The Row — the ultimate arbiter of elusive quiet luxury — eschewed footgear for its Paris Fashion Week show. Models sauntered around the space looking chic and intentionally undone, sporting messy face-covering hair and cashmere tights as the only barrier between their feet and the floor.

A day later, Doechii was discalced while attending the Chloé show. Sporting a billowing boho gown, furry charms and gold dangly earrings, her opulent ensemble was offset by her noticeably naked feet. This was no mistake or packing blunder. “The barefoot moment was something we talked about before we even got to Europe,” her stylist Sam Woolf told Elle. True to her boundary-breaking artistry, Doechii’s decision to side-step Chloé’s famous clogs feels poignantly against the grain. And such statements of shoelessness are not just happening at fashion shows.

For artist Raye, bare feet have become an on-stage signature. At Coachella, the Brit Awards and the 2025 Grammys, the singer has performed sans footwear. Her reasoning? “I feel like when I’m wearing shoes, I’m thinking about wearing shoes,” she told Christina Aguilera in an interview with Rolling Stone. By removing any high-heeled hindrances from the equation, Raye can just focus on the work.

It was a similar story for Angelina Jolie, who appeared on The Tonight Show in December with a black evening gown and unobscured pedicure. Sitting unshod, she explained that she had recently broken her toe and could not find comfortable footwear for the occasion.

In the fashion world, the idea that you can just not wear something because it doesn’t serve you is actually pretty radical. And when it comes to sartorial prestige, abstaining from shoes is possibly the most rule-breaking it gets.

All things considered, it’s not that surprising that barefoot fashion seems to have legs. Shoes have undergone an identity crisis of sorts since the dawn of the decade, bloating up to Moon Boot proportions and shrinking down to skinny, unassuming soles. Then the “wrong shoe theory” went viral, challenging us to do away with old-school adages about what makes footwear fashionable. Through it all, the steady rise of the mesh flat — ultra-thin translucent slip-ons — served as a telling indication that perhaps, good old fashion feet are the next footwear frontier. Finally, it appears the “no shoe theory” has arrived.

Case in point: in recent seasons, shoe designs have started to showcase toes as an aesthetic accessory. “Toe cleavage” has been championed by Phoebe Philo and co-signed by Kaia Gerber. Maison Margiela’s hoof-toe Tabis have inexplicably gone mainstream, while Schiaparelli’s other-wordly gold casted toe shoes have been embraced on the red carpet. At Paris Fashion Week, runways ventured into surrealist foot futurism when Hannah Rose Dalton, one half of Canadian-born duo Matières Fécales, wore their infamous skin-mimicking barefoot shoes the down the runway.

And for its Spring 2025 collection, Balenciaga took things further with the Zero, a lightweight 3D-moulded sandal that, according to the brand, “redefines minimalism” and “brings you closer to barefoot freedom.” Perhaps that is what this budding trend is all about: untethered autonomy.

After all, forgoing footwear is not a slight rejection of societal norms. It’s an explicit flirtation with the image of dirtiness. In Western public spaces, opting out of foot protection is shocking and controversial. Perhaps this is why it’s also a little alluring. Vogue has called toes the “new legs,” while The Cut has carefully considered the sexiness of lower digits. For their part, The Row, Doechii and Angelina Jolie all possess a captivating charm because of their singularity — with or without shoes.

Of course, barefoot fashion is not safe for sidewalk strolls or grocery store errands. But pop culture’s figurative toast to toes feels like an embrace of doing things differently. To that we say, march on. (But might we first suggest a Tetanus shot?)