Main menu
Martin Margiela
The first model of Martin Margiela's first fashion show, spring-summer 1989, is wearing a pair of boots that surprises the audience.
The Belgian designer wanted a shoe that didn't look like a shoe : made of flesh velvet calf, it gives the illusion of a bare foot on a sole and a heel. With its separate big toe, this boot is inspired by Japanese tabi, two-fingered socks-botillons with the big toe apart.
Margiela observed them during a trip to Japan in April 1984 with his classmates - from the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, carried by workers on the street. Years later, he learned that separating the big toe would stimulate a point of reflexology related to the heart.
Margiela gives his tabi boots with a large cylindrical heel that ensures their stability, in accordance with the diameter of the heel of the foot. The height of the heel is designed for a more comfortable arch than that allowed by a slingback shoe. Due to the technical difficulty involved in assembling these new shoes which are made by hand, only a Italian manufacturer, Vetro Diffuzione, agrees to produce them.
>> LISTEN TO THE PODCAST (3'26 mn)
Notice's author : Alexandre Samson