This month, one of the most demented pieces of footwear in recent memory appeared online: a Yeezy compression-sock-like shoe with a barely perceptible sole, available for preorder for $200.
Yeezy, the fashion brand owned by the artist once known as Kanye West (now Ye), is in the midst of a reinvention, appointing the shunned menswear designer Gosha Rubchinskiy as head of design just a few days before the release of the shoe. The YZY Pods, as the shoes are called, are something like the brand’s first big comeback product (albeit one designed before Rubchinskiy’s arrival), and Ye’s first shoe release since his relationship with Adidas ended in fall 2022.
But there was a problem: Someone else had already made it.
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The day after Yeezy shared its new shoe, Guram Gvasalia and his brand Vetements, the tailoring-and-streetwear outfit that arguably inspired our era of artisanal memeship, posted its own sock sneaker on Instagram, seeming to imply that Yeezy had copied its design. “The original flat sock sneaker since 2019 engineered by VETEMENTS. Accept no imitations,” the caption read, adding the hashtag #NothingBeatsTheOriginal. (Vetements did not reply to a request for comment.)
End of carouselAnd yet a day before either of these brands had shared its sock shoe, Balenciaga — the brand overseen by Demna, co-founder of Vetements and brother to Gvasalia — shared its variation on the pull-on phenomenon. Balenciaga, under Demna, has been making variations on the style since at least 2018, when Cardi B rapped in “I Like It,” “I like those Balenciagas/ the ones that look like socks.”
What’s more, Demna was still the creative force at Vetements when the sneaker sock was made. (He left in September 2019 to focus on Balenciaga and has long exchanged design ideas with Ye, consulting on early seasons of Yeezy and collaborating with Ye on his disastrous Gap line in 2022.) Amid Yeezy’s shoe publicity, Demna inner-circle member Mike the Ruler posted a number of now-disappeared Instagram stories alleging that Demna decided to move up the release of his latest sock shoes after rumors of Yeezy’s competing product circulated. (Balenciaga could not be reached for comment.)
Fashion today is built on copycats. Nearly every designer, no matter how sophisticated, makes a version of another designer’s hit product. Every brand has a chunky loafer, a crossbody bag, a bomber jacket. So, to see fashion brands and fans arguing over the (impossible to answer) question of who invented something is unusual in this era of ultra-merchandising.
“For fans of fashion, this is a bad way to end the year,” laments Lawrence Schlossman, a co-host of the menswear podcast “Throwing Fits,” which gleefully dissects the petty dramas and collection drops of men’s fashion. “This was a cheap, low-blow maneuver,” especially on the part of Gvasalia, of Vetements, which with its sophisticated yet bizarre products has the most clout of the three aforementioned brands at the moment, Schlossman says.
“This isn’t about the product,” he continues. “It’s about the human drama — these two brothers who hate each other.” Demna and Guram have had a very public falling out, mostly stemming from comments and Instagram posts from the latter. After their mother walked in Balenciaga’s Paris show in October, Guram posted that he was “praying for my brother’s soul.” Demna and Ye, in the meantime, cut ties publicly after the rapper’s antisemitic comments in 2022.
“All of these shoes,” Schlossman says, “all three of them — the Ye version, the Balenci[aga] version, the Vet[ements] version — they all suck. They’re literally unwearable, and they look bad with every single pair of pants.” (Ye has been wearing what appears to be a prototype of this shoe with leggings, a look that has earned much mockery on social media.)'
Schlossman’s co-host, James Harris, says it comes down to different priorities for these designers. “Do you want to be first, or do you want to do it the best?”
Which is exactly what makes the saga of the sock boot even weirder: It isn’t just hypebeast brands that are making these weird little foot tubes.
The Row, the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen-helmed brand that purrs the softest among the quiet luxury players, began in 2019 making a mesh sock slipper that became a cult shoe this summer among social media power shoppers. Alaïa, an even more rarefied brand favored by the Row’s demographic, makes mesh ballet flats that also popped up online and all over Fashion Week in September. And Bottega Veneta, the Italian brand that has championed eccentric craftsmanship under former Margiela designer Matthieu Blazy, has a shoe that appears to be a cable knit sock with a thin sole but is actually woven lambskin leather, in the collection now in stores. The heeled version of that shoe sold out “within a few days” on e-tailer Mytheresa, says Tiffany Hsu, the company’s chief buying officer.
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“It’s kind of like you’re not wearing anything,” Hsu says. “It’s the epitome of quiet luxury, because you’re imitating not wearing shoes. They indicate, ‘I’m not wearing a shoe because I’m comfortable, and I don’t care.’” Ironically, they can be exorbitantly expensive — the Row’s mesh flats are $690, while Bottega’s flat leather sock shoes are $4,100 — which Hsu says is because pieces like this are often much more complicated in development and construction than a leather shoe.
For Vogue fashion news writer José Criales-Unzueta, the sock boot (or shoe) wars of 2023 are a summation of all of this year’s trends but also hint at a larger coming shift in how men’s and women’s fashion intersect.
Designers like the late Virgil Abloh may have adored under-the-radar womenswear minds such as Phoebe Philo, but they have long existed as separate subcultures. “What I find fascinating is that these subsets of fashion are always relating to each other, but never as outwardly or never as evidently as with this,” Criales-Unzueta says. “We always have these two camps: of hype and sneaker culture [on the one hand]. And on the other, the Bottegas and the Alaïas and the Row — the if-you-know-you-know luxury. Now there’s this intersection of these two camps of fashion, which are progressively more interested in each other.”
Harris and Schlossman wonder if these shoes spell the end of the sneaker’s hegemony, as designers compete to make the least-shoe of shoes.
“I think it’s conceptually a rejection of sneakers,” Schlossman says, hastening to add that he doubts that any of the versions from Yeezy, Balenciaga or Vetements will catch on. (Balenciaga, ever bucking trends, actually just released its biggest shoe to date, the 10XL, a nearly four-pound behemoth in which models struggled to walk.)
What we will see, Harris says, is “the daintier and sleeker silhouettes” beginning to take hold next year, such as Lemaire loafers, Studio Nicholson slip-ons and Stoffa opera flats.
And for those who still remain unconvinced by the predominance of this trend? Criales-Unzueta looks back to an even more remote and simple time, before social media and hypebeasts and even fashion magazines — to the dawn of humankind. “The first shoe looked like these things,” he says. “A simple leather sole and a fabric band.”
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