Why Is Everyone Wearing See-Through Shoes?

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been traveling. A short wintry spell in Kathmandu, on the foothills of the snowy Himalayas. A breathless transit through Kunming – and the associated eccentricities of Chinese airport cuisine. A sticky, sweaty summer in the sweltering thoroughfares of Phnom Penh, where, as Zara Larsson sings, summer is practically never over. 

You see, dear reader, it’s that part of the world where the heat can sometimes impair your prefrontal cortex from telling the years from the seasons (my rational faculties refuse to accept that I’ve been here for a year already). 

So, believe me when I say I completely understand what my fellow Westerners are going through because of the heatwave.

Except, you know, we got air-conditioning.

Tragically, even the in-house HVAC unit of my apartment wasn’t enough to prevent the secondhand second-degree burns I received upon viewing the Saint Laurent Men’s Summer 2027 runway collection, where models emerged with steamy toes marinating inside semi-transparent sepia-toned PVC oxford dress-shoes during one of the worst-recorded heatwaves France has ever seen.

Clouded with perspiration (ew), those snout-nosed, putrid plastic concoctions came paired with what would’ve otherwise been an entirely inoffensive (and entirely summer-inappropriate) lineup of belted coats and slouchy suits – all slate-blues and charcoal blacks. Anthony Vacarrello explained to WWD: “I asked myself: ‘Why torture women with plastic shoes, but not men?’”

Stinking synthetics aside, though (life in plastic, not so fantastic!), it appears, dear reader, that there’s been a steady trend in the industry towards showing off your – in delightful ignorance of a better word – piggies. 

Are you ready to show yours?

Who Let the Dogs Out?

“No one wants to see a gangly, hunched phalanx wriggling like a bunch of circumcised hot dogs,” wrote Liana Satenstein. And yet, here we are.

I, for one, am still not over the lingering trauma of Balenciaga Pre-Fall 2025, which, shot on an iPhone (with the occasional fleshy finger blurring the lens), presented an entirely different take on the classic tale of the five little pigs. 

A shallow molded EVA sole cradling the heel, four bare small toes out for a constitutional, and the big old throbbing thumb wrapped in what i-D calls “a phalangeal condom,” thus, dear reader, is the Zero. Or as Balenciaga describes it, footwear that “distills shoes to their essence, bringing it as close as possible to being barefoot.” A shoe is the same way that a Post-It note is a document.

But between Balenciaga’s The Zero and The Row’s Lyst Index-approved $600 flip-flops and now Saint Laurent’s freaktastic phalanxafied Oxfords, the list of defendants for fashion’s phalangeal felonies are, by no means, small. 

Khaite’s new Eva pump offered a parted-lip sliver of feet, while Tory Burch cut “a bull’s eye gash right on the big toe” – a flash of toe cleavage, if you will. Phoebe Philo’s campaign last year similarly showed a pair of bare feet with lacquered red toes “slipping out of a thong wedger.” 

And Matthieu Blazy’s Cruise 2027 Chanel Biarritz sandals – mere heel-cradling soleless harnesses, “cradling buffed heels like a panty crotch,” writes Satenstein, put each pulsating metatarsal tendon on full display!

But transparent shoes specifically originate in the realm of the Kardashians; Kim was already wearing PVC Yeezy heels back in 2016 – ripe for a (mildly horrifying) comeback ten years on – while PVC pleaser heels remain a favorite among pole dancers and Lady Gaga. Kristen Stewart has put her singular stamp on Chanel’s clear boots, and Rihanna, Kendall Jenner, and Bella Hadid have all tried their hand at sky-high, translucent styles. 

Not to mention, for SS25, Victoria Beckham unveiled a full-foot baring transparent heel that comes with its own medical warning! 

All Clear on the Handbag Front

But transparency (the literal kind) has been trending for a while now, what with the naked dress, sheer mesh shoes, and show-it-all bags – in clear, almost always non-biodegradable, fabrications – cycling in and out of fashion.

“In a world of change, transparency is key – even if it’s just letting the world peep into what we schlep around on a day-to-day basis,” wrote Ray Lowe for Refinery29, the last time see-through PVC bags really blew up circa 2018. Now, almost a decade later, her words ring true again: “we’re just into the slightly tacky, slightly nostalgic look of a good ol’ plastic bag.”

And what with the advent of see-through shoes on the runway, it’s worth considering if bags composed of that same putrescent PVC are also due for a comeback. “Clear bags are a flash-in-the-pan trend every five years or so,” wrote Amanda, “but they never tend to stick around much beyond the season in which they emerge, probably because they fail at a key reason people use handbags: to keep all their stuff together in a way which doesn’t reveal that keeping your stuff together is a struggle to begin with.”

Which is, of course, the key reason why Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel Resort 2018 collection (dubbed”posh rainwear to the extreme”), Virgil Abloh’s SS19 clear Vuitton Keepalls, Céline’s $600 Instagram-famous shopping bag, and even Megs’ 1996 clear vinyl Kelly – a special Hermès dispatch for the post-1995 Paris attacks security checks – warrant little more than the occasional wear.

Occasions that could, for instance, be stadium events like the FIFA World Cup 2026 (NFL diktats dictate clear-bag policies smaller than 12 by 6 by 12 inches, unobstructed by buckles or decor), concerts (the Eras Tour and Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour made transparent bags a logistical necessity, Shein’s $2 gold-chain-trimmed version being the most popular), and the beach.

But now that we’re baring our toes to the world – hulking halluxes, buffed heels, pulsating pinkies and all – is that about to change?

For Transparency’s Sake

“The foot focus,” writes Satenstein, “feels right in the era where we’ve seen it all: every body part freely jiggles on social media. There’s nothing left to the imagination. As for the foot? It’s a tease by way of the mere digit. Call it kinky! Call it seductive.” The last erotic frontier, if you will. 

But if the toe is the last frontier of bodily self-revelation (Satenstein, who herself has been to New York, Copenhagen, and Paris in a pair of Vibram’s freaky FiveFingers, ponders, “Someone, please tell me what comes after the FiveFingers. SixFingers?!”), what does a transparent bag reveal? 

And why reveal anything at all? Tova, the scandalizing chef, writes in her Substack Wholesome Filth, “There is an epidemic of women willing to put their personal lives on display out of a desperation for views.” 

Kate Spade, in her 2000 book Contents, considers exactly this – photographing the insides of different women’s bags as windows into their inner lives. Helen Gurley Brown’s leopard print tissues. Polly Mellen’s YSL nail polish, a gift from her Parisian chauffeur. A stray calculator! The original “what’s in my bag,” before ring lights, brand deals, and affiliate TikTok got involved. 

My point is that – like a toe (or ten) reserved just for a lover’s eye, the insides of our bags too used to be intimate – accidental, uncurated, a slice of our state of mind! “That’s what my brain is like. I’m a visual person, I have to spread everything out to see it,” Sofia Coppola famously said.

On the other hand (or foot!), a see-through shoe – or bag – is the exact antithesis, replacing intimacy with performance. Scheduled pedicures.  A secondhand copy of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis placed just so. Everything is arranged artfully for the world to see. “Not pictured: the giant tote bag that was full of stuff not minimalist/chic enough for this Staud bag,” Eva Chen once captioned with a photo of her PVC Shirley bag.

As for me – somewhere between Kathmandu and Kunming and Phnom Penh’s scorching summers, airport security had me upend the contents of my bag so many times that I’ve simply stopped caring what spills out. 

Which is perhaps the most radical transparency of all: not the curated see-through bag, but the one dumped unceremoniously onto a plastic TSA tray in the wee hours of dawn for a disinterested stranger to inspect with a wand.

Vaccarello tortured his models’ toes in PVC for the sake of art. The airport did the same to my dignity for free.