2 min read
The era of the naked shoe, a concept introduced by Matthieu Blazy at Chanel’s cruise 2027 show in April, was rather brief. Now, the runways of New York Fashion Week have presented something much more extreme: no shoes at all.
Amid the season’s flip-flops and ballet flats, the spring/summer 2027 runways have made a compelling case for freeing the foot. At Tory Burch, the shoeless look came with a butter-yellow car coat cut in a ’60s silhouette and a woven evening bag. Burch wrote in the show notes that the collection was about the “joy of getting dressed.”
Perhaps the joy, this season, is knowing when to leave something off.
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Tory Burch spring/summer 2027.
The following afternoon at Calvin Klein, Veronica Leoni presented a wearable—albeit still extreme—twist on going barefoot. She showed crochet sandals that connected around the ankle and lower foot in an almost thong-like fashion, with the sides cut out to reveal the wearer’s toes. Leoni’s “anti-shoe” tapped into the clean, almost hedonistic lines of the collection, its minimal shape harkening back to the brand’s ’90s roots.
Courtesy of Calvin Klein
Calvin Klein spring 2027.
Shoeless models also popped up at Jane Wade, where they wore gorpcore pieces, like a forest green dress, barefoot with blades of grass lining the ankles, and at Area, where they threw off their lace sock heels on the runway.
Area’s version—whether intentional or not—fit neatly into the world-building that designer Nicholas Aburn champions. It was easy to envision the Area woman flinging her shoes off after a long night out, as one model did while wearing a confetti-effect micromini dress and carrying a set of heels in her hand.
Charles Linn / Courtesy of JANE WADE
Jane Wade spring/summer 2027.
Daniele Oberrauch
Area spring/summer 2027.
Like Area, 7 For All Mankind championed a similarly party-girl approach. Nicola Brognano leaned into the indie-sleaze aesthetic with low-rise check hot pants, piles of long, beaded necklaces, and skintight cigarette pants. Most models accessorized with aughts-appropriate block heels, but one decided to go barefoot, as if she had done away with them halfway through the night.
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7 For All Mankind spring/summer 2027.
The practicality of barefoot styling is questionable at best—especially in New York, where the sidewalks aren’t exactly, well, clean. But in the context of the runway, it’s an opportunity for designers to strip away the expected finishing touch and let the fantasy take the place of a shoe.
But for everyone else, barefoot dressing is best attempted at your own risk.