The 10 Key Shoe Trends To Know From The Spring/Summer 2024 Runways

Designers debuted 9,584 looks across 230 shows and presentations in New York, London, Milan and Paris during the spring/summer 2024 season… almost all of which included shoes. The great minds at Vogue House have thought long and hard about these statistics and the official prediction is thus: people will almost definitely be wearing things on their feet when spring arrives. This will be a pleasant update for anyone who is not part of Shawn Mendes’s barefoot club (for whom, this season, I’d recommend a series of Tetanus shots).

Read more: The Key Spring/Summer 2024 Trends To Know Now

That said, exposed toes, slippers and flip flops did permeate the SS24 collections, gesturing to more of a “boho” (or “off-grid”) mood than we’ve seen in previous seasons. I’d like to think all of the floor-sweeping swiffers that emerged were less of an ode to manual labour and more a question of pointing up the impracticality of wearing barely-there shoes in any kind of metropolitan environment. Our advice: stick to the knife-point stilettos, pantyhose, platform loafers and micro-kitten heels that were popular in all of the major fashion cities when you’re out in the (urban) wild.

Scroll on for a full run-down of this season’s leading shoe trends – including, yes, the ever-present ballet flat.

• The open-toe shoes: Saint Laurent Cassandra 60 Sandals, £835
• The flats: Aeyde Uma Mary-Jane Flats, £290
• The kitten heels: Jimmy Choo Metallic Heels, £750
• The mules: Kurt Geiger London Olive Bow Slide Mules, £189
• The pointed shoes: Prada Slingback Pumps, £860
• The platform shoes: Gucci Horsebit Platform Loafers, £1,060
• The off-duty shoes: Everlane Soft Loafers, £142
• The hosiery boots: Balenciaga Knife Boots, £715
• The slouchy boots: Maison Margiela Slouchy Western Boots, £1,521
• The decorative shoes: Cecilie Bahnsen Valeria Bow-Embellished Sandals, £444

Toes On Show

For too long have designers focused on more “beautiful” parts of the body: shoulders, midriffs and hips. This season, attention began to shift downwards, with the humble toe being introduced as fashion’s new erogenous zone. In other words, the peep toe went full-frontal. Pedi-spreaders proliferated in the collections of Sportmax, Mowalola and Victoria Beckham, while Burberry and Versace sent out not-quite office-appropriate thong-toed loafers. It was Louis Vuitton and SRVC who took this idea to the extreme, though, debuting one-toed heels with erotic, lingerie-esque detailing.

I Want It Flat Way

Fashion is in thrall to ladylike shoes at the moment, and its obsession with ballet flats, in particular, is set to continue. SS24 iterations were rendered in high-shine metallics and attention-seeking embellishments. There were crystal-encrusted details at Loewe, Burberry and Chanel while mirror-like surfaces were popular at Versace, Alaïa and Christian Louboutin. First you find it weird, then you come to love it – as with all great shoes.

Sex Kitten

Some of the best heels of the spring/summer 2024 season barely qualify as heels at all, so short is the stub that protrudes from their soles. Once maligned for their grandma-ish associations, over the past year or so, kitten heels have been reclaimed by some of the most successful dressers out there. Designers have accordingly turbocharged the silhouette, applying nib-heels to slouchy boots at Balenciaga and pearl-dotted gladiator boots at Dior. Miuccia, of course, knows the so-wrong-it’s-right power of a kitten heel and affixed sturdy triangles to satin slip-ons, while Valentino, Versace, 16Arlington and Gucci followed suit with their own takes on the micro-heel.

Mule It Over

The mule has an inbuilt wrong-ness to it, which makes it quite chic, and this season, some of the most elegant designers on the schedule recast this frumpish silhouette as a symbol of hard-won cool. Quirked-up mules were present at Alaïa, Bottega Veneta, Loewe and Versace, while Mugler and Knwls managed to take the shoe in more of an erotic direction.

On A Knife-Edge

There’s something quite assertive (almost severe) about a toe that looks as though it has been sharpened to a decisive point. It confers danger and determination and a headstrong disposition, and it was one of the most popular silhouettes of the spring/summer 2024 season. There were classic iterations of the design at just about every tentpole house – Prada, Valentino, Alexander McQueen, Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent – while more extreme and cartoonish interpretations surfaced at Balenciaga, Acne Studios, Avavav, Luar and Hodakova. This is a boss bitch shoe for even the most gentle of characters.

Provide A Platform

Flats and ballet pumps continue to dominate street style, but, this season, designers offered people an alternative: enormous, ankle-threatening platforms. Models stomped through Molly Goddard, Roberto Cavalli, Eckhaus Latta, Peter Do, Sacai and Simone Rocha (to name but a few) in behemoth clodhoppers. But the most memorable iterations appeared in Sabato De Sarno’s debut collection at Gucci. There, rakish models in miniscule shorts were anchored by vertiginous (and quite thickset) Ancora-red horsebit loafers.

Off-Off-Duty

Fashion observers love to speculate about all the secret meanings that intellectual designers like Miuccia Prada, Jonathan Anderson and the Olsen twins code into their collections. But for spring/summer 2024, their message was loud and clear: it’s time to quit your job. How else to explain the flip flops (and toe plasters) at Miu Miu, Coperni, Chanel and Hermès? And then there were all those slippers at Tove, Chopova Lowena, JW Anderson and The Row (where models looked as though they had just emerged from a hotel room). Even Rick Owens’s orthopaedic physio boot leaned into the “off-duty” mood.

Hone In On Hosiery

This trend is less about a particular shoe, more about how you style it – specifically, worn inside of tights, as the models did at the Givenchy and Jil Sander spring/summer 2024 shows. It’s worth mentioning the SS24 heels constructed with specific hosiery details, too, like the ones at Zimmerman, Louis Vuitton, Johanna Parv and Maison Margiela. Designs with see-through legs and elastic-sock uppers suggest speed and freneticism and the urgent drive to be seen as a gorgeous weirdo.

Slouch Around

These are not the boho boots adored by Sienna Miller in 2003 and Sarah Jessica Parker in 2023, but their fun-loving descendants who prefer parties to pilates. See: the adjustable denim booties that debuted on the Y/Project catwalk and the wipe-clean booties at Zomer and the ultra-wide booties at All-In and Dion Lee, cinched in at the legs with elastic cords. There were more conservative examples of the trend at Victoria Beckham and Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood and Knwls, but all of these featured reams of sagging fabric that pooled and drooped around the ankles.

Swiffers

For his spring/summer 2024 collection at 16Arlington, Marco Capaldo debuted a heel that had been swathed in rubber tentacles like the brushes in an automatic car wash. Erdem then showcased kitten heels that had been wrapped in debris-sweeping metallic bows, and then there were the transparent pumps at Mugler which had been covered in long strands of sequined plumage. Perhaps this season, the most trend-led among us will be slipping their feet into Amazon Prime’s swiffer-slippers.