are vibram five fingers the new tabis?
a report from the freaky little shoe front lines
move over margiela, there’s a new weirdo in town.
i have a confession, and one i’m not sure how the nice foot guys who email me about my heels will take: this week i am resisting the urge to slip all ten of my toes into a pair of vibram five finger shoes.
specifically, it’s the v soul i’m after: cute, with crossover ballet-esque straps – a bit like a kinky sister of the sandy liang salomon mary janes. and they even come in pink!!
really, this is no big surprise: balenciaga did a heeled boot vibram collab all the way back in 2020, and they’ve been cropping up on the issey miyake-loving tiktok girlies for a while. vibram, which started giving the world’s toes their own individual ‘pockets’ back in 2005, even has a mesh ballet pump version. can you say alaïa?? (and, tbh, literally every other brand that’s followed suit with a mesh ballet pump, god help us all).
how did we get here? let’s acknowledge the mainstreaming of the margiela tabi over the last few years – from the villainous tabi thief to somewhat unlikely proponent kylie jenner. this has, of course, come with price rises, which have seen the RRP of a pair of tabis climb at a rate to rival a chanel classic flap. i tracked down the receipt for my boots circa 2017: £600. they now cost £1150, so a 92% increase. owch.
as my tiktok gang may know, i recently posted a video bemoaning the £820 ballet pump version’s flimsiness – which, in what is arguably a further sign of the culture reaching peak tabi, has thus far racked up 43,000 views, plus 58,000 on instagram. and seeing as my pumps are on their last legs after six months, i’m in the market for a more pocket-friendly alternative – the vibrams can be mine for just £90.
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speaking of alternatives, i’ve also been getting blasted on ig with net a porter ads for nike rifts, which i have been a proponent of for years now – i actually prophesied their comeback in this dazed article from 2020, in which i also predicted the puma mostro’s return. (although fair warning on the rifts, the soles are prone to fall off the vintage ones, even if you get them re-glued).
the lore of the vibrams is that they are a part of the barefoot movement, which is basically this idea that shoes are oppressive and changing the natural shape of our feet. there’s something a little incel-adjacent about it all, like jawmaxxing and mewing, but for your feet. feetmaxxing? (“help recovering from a recent shoe relapse !” one poster pleads on the barefoot subreddit.) for what it’s worth, vibram also settled a class action lawsuit over the supposed health benefits of its shoes – luckily i literally only care about aesthetics.
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if i’m reallllllly honest, i also think my consideration of the v souls is driven by a nOt LiKe OtHEr GiRls desire to get as far away from the adidas samba as humanly possible. we’re in this boom and bust shoe trend cycle, from sambas to onitsuka tigers to puma speedcats, where a silhouette rockets to ubiquity and then falls off a cliff into basicville in what feels like days. so while they feel like a safe haven now, maybe the five fingers will be next…
after all, like marilyn monroe or maybe gandhi or probably voltaire once said: first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they also find themselves adding the freaky little toe shoes to basket.
Just a warning to whoever needs to see this that my small child is terrified of them so I’m unable to wear mine. It’s some instinctive uncanny valley primal fear.
too much investigation, lovely, my answer would be that you just need to feel more grounded and feel the Earth under your feet whilst surviving in the sensory overload of the city that you're in and of the sensory overload that is the Internet