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Glenn Martens debuted his inaugural couture collection for Maison Margiela today. His work was disconcertingly beautiful, even haunting, at moments, with fabric that looked like chipping paint, peeling wallpaper, and decaying tin ceiling tiles. At their heads, models were bound in cellophane shower caps and fabric encrusted with gemstones. At their toes, they were fully exposed.
In a number of looks, Martens reimagined the Tabi boot, an at-times off-putting signature style of Margiela debuted by Martin Margiela himself in 1989. Martens’s update: fashioning the shoes in a clear plastic. Not only are the wearer’s toes separated, hooflike, between first and second, but they’re revealed for all to see.
Liana Satenstein, author of Neverworns and Substack’s premier voice in freaky footwear, says, “We’ve hit peak foot—full throttle sickness with the feet.” Up until now, Satenstein, who reviews all sorts of wacky shoes on Instagram, credited the Vibram FiveFingers as the freakiest shoe in existence. (She’s referring to the rubber-soled high performance shoe known for separating each toe in its silhouette—essentially creating a glove for your foot.) But this new Tabi, Satenstein theorizes, might, ahem, toe that line.
“The Vibram covers all the toes, but in this one, everything is out on display,” she says. “It might be the final boss of demented footwear because one, you can see everything, and two, you have the hoof. It’s the double threat of fetishes.”
Martens chose to pair the subversive, see-through cloven footwear with the collection’s most ethereal gowns, each flowing with swaths of silk and bedecked with dainty floral appliqué. It’s beautiful. It’s gross. It’s extraordinary. It’s human. It’s esoteric. And in confronting fetish head-on—foot, bondage, exhibitionism, take your pick—Martens has created something revoltingly fantastic.
Asked whether it would provoke another downtown New York Tabi theft, referring to the scandal in which a girl’s Tinder date thieved her Tabis, Satenstein says maybe not. Too freaky.
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