Fashion Victim: Sandal Shooties?

Full disclosure: I hate inappropriately foot-baring footwear, as evinced—and I’m fully aware that I may be one of the only individuals on the planet with such a vehement hatred of warm-weather shoes. Alas. Yet I’m sure that I can’t be the only person in the universe scratching their heads over these conflicted disasters. Topping the list of sartorial items that completely flummox me are those pieces which purport to be two things at once—jeggings, skorts, puffy winter vests (seriously, wtf?), tights with shorts, and boots with no feet.

These things first came onto the fashion radar a few years ago—Rachel Bilson rocked a nude pair for awhile a few springs ago and, admittedly, at first, I kind of followed. Cute, allowedly. Innovative, definitely. Perplexing, well, yes—but girl looked good. At least, for the spring of 2008.

Photos of her rocking those Maison Martin Margiela shoes she wore around that summer were covered by tons of blogs. The consistently maintained stance on these disasters were that they were horrendous—interesting, but horrendous. Covetable, but weird. Not entirely attractive, but still kind of cool. Most people conceded that they were, indeed, violating the laws of The Fashion Police, or whatever—but the longer they looked at them, the less egregious they became. All it took was one ahead-of-the-curve lady with a penchant for fine, fashion-forward footwear to re-set the sartorial standard to ridiculous.

As history knows, as soon as someone does something kind of good, one time, inevitably comes the inevitable flood of imitations. These awful shooties took a few seasons to catch on (unlike the similarly perplexing, super complex, and ridiculously obtuse knee-high gladiator sandal), but this summer I’ve seen a million and a half version of these bizarre, hybrid mutt-boots everywhere. High-street iterations of these ankle-sweat-inducing sandals started cropping up everywhere, much to the delight of pretty much every shoe blog, and much to my chagrin.

I earnestly entertained the hope that only the most outrageous of trend-hoppers would be interested in these this year, but I was sadly mistaken. Of course this new hybrid-species of shoe has done nothing but grow in popularity, out-menacing even the most preposterously bedazzled or otherwise en-fug-led shoe trend of the season. When a coworker opted to sport these at work (during a delivery day nonetheless—her poor toes!) I realized it was the last straw.

Ladies! These shoes are not your friends. They are not the perfect summer alternative to boots; they are not the perfect fall alternative to sandals. They are a hideously annoying cross between two perfectly good seasons that do nothing but leave me (and, honestly, every dude you encounter) wondering what the hell was wrong with the lights in your bedroom when you dressed yourself in the morning. Nothing, save for wearing socks with thong sandals, could come close to approximating the head-scratching fugliness of these creations. The following is hard for me to unsay—I’d always rather be interested than bored—but in instances like these, I haven’t any other choice: leave the fashion-ing to the professionals. Drop your mouse, back away from the computer, and recognize that, sometimes, Maison Martin Margiela is the only way something can be done right. Chances are, it will be done two years earlier than you’ll first encounter it on your regular neighbourhood fashionista, but chances are, by the time you see it on the feet of your streets, it will be abnormal (and not in a good way), and too bizarrely passé.

Even if, truth be told, I kind of want to dare someone to wear these with wool socks in the middle of November just to find out how it feels.