Everyone at Fashion Week Is Wearing Flip-Flops

We just aren’t having the right conversations about flip-flops. It’s always, “Is wearing flip-flops in New York City basically just sweeping the street with the soles of your feet?” and never, “Which pair of flip-flops would look best with my leather opera gloves and white sleeveless cocktail midi dress?” If being barefoot is a luxury, then shouldn’t wearing flip-flops be just as fanciful? They’re the most fun you can have with your soles covered!

At Burberry’s postponed spring 2023 show, which would turn out to be Riccardo Tisci’s last at the house, Kanye West sat front row in a pair of Margiela tabi socks and diamond flip-flops. On the runway, Mariacarla Boscono wore a simple, less ritzy pair with a velvet gown cut to fall off the shoulders like a shawl, and Naomi Campbell walked in the same ones, wearing a long trench skirt and matching utility jacket. Bella Hadid followed in a heeled flip-flop with a strap meant to mimic the ones that keep you attached to your surfboard, styled with a crinkly swimsuit-gown hybrid.

Sure, people were talking about the show that almost didn’t happen and how it was inspired by goths at the beach, but they also fixated on the flip-flops. Ye would later take to his Instagram Story to share a close-up photo of his glitzy pair with the accompanying words in large bold text: “Don’t talk to me.”

Kanye West wearing diamond Burberry flip-flops outside the spring 2023 show.

Flip-flops are often considered the footwear equivalent of a Do Not Disturb sign. If you see someone in a pair, they probably don’t want to be seen, whether they’re on the way back from a pedicure with tissue tucked tightly in between their toes or on a midnight treat run to the corner store in a pair of faded plaid pajama pants that have never seen the light of day. At Copenhagen Fashion Week back in 2018, flip-flops caused a tiny stir when they were spotted on the feet of every street style star, but this fashion month, the flip-flop conversation is finally seeing a major, more elevated, shift.

Mariacarla Boscono wearing a velvet off-the-shoulder gown with flip flops at the Spring 2023 Burberry show.

Naomi Campbell wearing flip flops with a trench skirt and utility jacket at the Spring 2023 Burberry show. 

At The Row, Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen’s pre-fall 2023 collection featured flip-flops. Lots of flip-flops. There were other shoes, too: pointy brown ballet flats, canvas sneakers, and white sock boots with contrasting black soles and heels. But everyone was talking about the flops.

A model at The Row’s pre-fall 2023 show in Paris wearing a crochet dress and flip-flops.

Flip-flops worn with trousers and a white collared shirt, layered with a sweater and a long flowing black satin trench! Flip-flops worn with a heavenly asymmetrical crochet gown (imagine the most beautiful doilies you’ve deemed too magnificent to ever use, all stitched together) with white scalloped edges spilling out over the neck and under the arms! And, yes, flip-flops worn with leather opera gloves and a white sleeveless cocktail midi dress! (Let’s also not forget that on the rare occasion that a photo of Ashley and Mary-Kate surfaces, it’s often of them wearing flip-flops with the confident charm that’s their personal style signature.) Back in New York, there were also flip-flops at Gabriela Hearst and Khaite, worn both with simple black strapless dresses and dresses that collapsed into fits of fringe.

A model at The Row’s pre-fall 2023 show in Paris wearing flip-flops with a white dress and leather opera gloves.

The word chic has been a topic of conversation this fashion month too. It’s an overused term people reach for when they’re too lazy to really describe how they feel about something, but it really should be reserved for when they’re actually speechless: when an item or a person is so stylish, none of the typical descriptors feels right. There’s also something a little zany about things that are utterly chic. A lace-trimmed dress with five-inch pumps is pretty. A knockout evening gown with a no-frills pair of rubber flip-flops though? That’s chic.

A model wearing a strapless black dress with flip-flops at the Gabriela Hearst spring 2023 show.

Some might chalk up the barrage of flip-flops at fashion week as an extension of the Y2K phenomena or even the newfound mainstream popularity of Margiela’s split-toe tabi. Maybe we’ve all gotten so used to toes—whether it be the actual image of them in flip-flops from recirculated 2000s tabloid photos or the once-controversial impression of them on a heel—that we’ve decided there’s no reason to hide them. Or maybe it’s the blissful confidence of a flip-flop we’ve all just started to notice. To wear a flip-flop with a gown is to be so certain of who you are that you don’t need to risk blisters to stand taller.

And unlike the shoes that actually do add inches, like the ones at Saint Laurent’s spring show, flip-flops give you the ease to essentially float about your day. What’s more beautiful than that glow you get when you’re not scared of toppling over?

A model at the Courrèges show holding her slingbacks on a runway made of sand.

Even at shows with no flip-flops, like Courrèges or Ferragamo or Jil Sander, the flip-flop philosophy was still there. All three brands had runways made of sand, and it was hard not to imagine the models in their Ferragamo suede suits or knit sequined Jil Sander fringe skirts at the beach. At Courrèges, models even walked barefoot, wearing dresses with a spiral of mostly unfastened rouleau buttons from the neck to the hem, dangling the slings of their heeled slingbacks between their fingers. They looked cool and undone and unbothered, as if they had kicked off their shoes and headed to the sea to watch the sunset after a long night out dancing. But maybe their air of effortlessness would have been even more believable if they were the type of girls to just start the night out in flip-flops.

Tara Gonzalez

Tara Gonzalez is the Senior Fashion Editor at Harper’s Bazaar. Previously, she was the style writer at InStyle, founding commerce editor at Glamour, and fashion editor at Coveteur.