There’s crazy news from the sneaker front: sneakers with high heels! The eye doesn’t really want to believe them yet. Don’t they look like shit? As is so often the case in fashion, however, we’ll quickly get used to them, and then the Copycat models that are sure to follow soon will look like shit, while we admire Balenciaga’s ‘X-Pander’ with its three-inch stiletto heel revered as a cult shoe.
These high heels look as if you took a no-name sneaker from Deichmann and converted one of those thin plastic pins, like those that were stuck across the back of some Adidas models in the 80s to regulate cushioning, into a stiletto and impaled vertically in the heel. The technical language already knows a word for such a combination of sneakers and heels, which literally reverses the relationship between high and low: “Sneels”.
Dior joins in too, their “D-Zenith Ankle Boot” consists of a cream-colored high-top sneaker with an integrated sock, and glued under the heel is a sculptural, elegantly twisted gold women’s shoe heel. The motto here is “walk, don’t run” for obvious reasons, but who would go for a jog in saucy luxury heels?
At first glance, you think a meme designer made a joke
Some connoisseurs will object that designer Isabel Marant’s wedge sneakers were already sneakers with heels ten years ago. No! Marant’s shoes were high-tops with chunky heels hidden inside. The sole of the sneaker on the outside touched the ground all the way, one felt reminded of the bashful heels that are popular with short business men because they allow the wearer to “grow” five to ten centimeters thanks to the “invisibly” integrated insole. Sneels, on the other hand, present their heels openly.
At first glance, you think a meme designer made a joke, but no, they really exist. Nike and Comme des Garçons are collaborating to offer a model, Miu Miu’s pairing a pointed-toe football boot at the back with two-inch kitten heels. It’s as if luxury fashion wants to say: Ok, first we resisted vulgar sneakers for a long time, then there were luxury sneakers on platform soles, and platform Crocs, and high-heel Crocs, and other absurd leisure shoe interpretations – what can come now? Seen in this way, Sneels are simply the next logical step in the evolution or escalation of fashion.
This column first appeared in the Musikexpress issue 04/2022.