‘The absence becomes the point’: the steady march of shoes that are barely there

Dear Frances offers the latest take on ballet flats, offering ‘a unique, glove-like fit wearability’ – which is fine if you have nice feet

When is a shoe not a shoe? On sale this month is a pair that seems to pose the question – the no shoe-shoe is the work of the cult brand Dear Frances, and it’s the latest in a steady march of shoes that are barely there; a take on naked dressing but for the foot.

With a high-vamp, the Balla shoe, which the brand calls a “sock shoe”, covers almost the entire foot, but also leaves it – encased but on display – in a kind of flimsy foot-cage. According to Jane Frances, the creative director and founder of the brand, it “offers a unique, glove-like fit wearability” and “takes inspiration from the delicate strength of a woman”.

It’s a hyperbolic response to a footwear moment that has seen toes take centre stage, not least via Vibram’s FiveFingers shoes. Once too horrifying for anyone but barefoot advocates, they are now increasingly spotted in the wild, from local pavements to celebrity big-hitters such as Rihanna.

When it comes to mesh shoes in particular, a lot can be charted back to 2022 and the wildfire success of Alaia’s £650 fishnet ballet flats, which set off a chain reaction of high-fashion iterations and high-street dupes.

The Alaia flats worked, according to Tiffany Hill, founder of Trend Suite, because they “gave consumers something familiar – the ballet flat – but made it feel more intimate, lighter and slightly exposed. It was not quite a sandal and not quite a traditional flat. It sat in that clever middle ground: covered, but not covered; practical, but a little provocative.”

But if the fishnet-grade of those – and others, such as a pair of woven leather ballet flats on sale at John Lewis this season – had holes just about small enough to drain udon noodles, some others, the Dear Frances sock-shoe, its virally successful predecessor, the Balla mesh ballerina flat, as well as pairs at Asos included, have a weave that would keep even vermicelli from going down the sink.

They form a neat frame for the foot. “What we are seeing now,” says Hill, is that “the foot is becoming part of the styling language, almost like jewellery or skin”. She adds: “Shoes are no longer simply finishing the outfit; they are creating a small moment of tension. Is it dressed? Is it undressed? Is it elegant or strange? That ambiguity is exactly why the naked shoe feels so current.”

At the most recent Chanel show in Biarritz, barely-there footwear reached its absurd and avant-garde zenith with heels tied to models’ feet without anything by way of the rest of the shoe in sight. Hill sees them as an “extreme fashion expression”. One, she says, “is runway provocation; the other is commercial translation”. But, she says, “they are part of the same movement: footwear being reduced until the absence becomes the point”.

Many of these shoes are extremely revealing and can be viewed as a humblebrag given success in pulling them off is generally predicated on having had a recent pedicure and/or naturally nice feet.

They also chime with a moment for toes and “toe cleavage” – it doesn’t feel coincidental that these nearly naked shoes are surfacing at a time when feet, and foot fetishes, have gone mainstream and a nice pair of feet can earn their owner thousands of pounds online. Or as “touching grass” is being championed as a real-world antidote to the frazzle and intangibility of digital life.

But these naked shoes aren’t necessarily good news for feet. Sarah Crookes, director of Hackney Podiatry, expresses concern that, as “the upper of a shoe does a lot to support the foot in it’s function, after a long period of wearing them the wearer may end up with foot strain.” The thin sole doesn’t fill her with confidence, either: the “sole of a shoe is designed to offer the foot shock absorption from the concrete pavements, so the foot will feel tired from having had no support”. Particularly for anyone suffering from problems with their plantar fascia and achilles tendon, she wouldn’t recommend the shoe.

“All in all,” she says, “a unique shoe which is likely to draw attention – but from a podiatrist’s perspective, I wouldn’t recommend it as a functional shoe.” So even if you’re after the perfect weave to show off your metatarsals this summer, you might want to think again before trying to get up to a serious step-count in them.