Are High Heels Dead?

A funny thing has happened in fashion lately: Unfashionable footwear is suddenly à la mode.
Running shoes, Birkenstocks, Teva-type hiking sandals and Adidas-style slides were among the low shoes with a high profile during the recent spring fashion shows on the runway—and in the audience. Wide, flat footbeds, toe room, cushiony soles. Slaves to fashion have never been so comfortable.
This is a golden opportunity for the likes of Dr. Scholl’s: After Marc Jacobs sent a crushed velvet version for spring down the runway, Vogue named it “best accessory” of the day. But it presents an essential dilemma to consumers and other designers who must decide whether to adopt the look that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen and Heidi Klum wear so adroitly: Are the orthopedic shoe and other clunky flats here to stay?
It wouldn’t be the first time that a fad dovetailed so thoroughly with a cultural shift that it became a classic wardrobe staple. Bikinis were once considered a radical experiment in swimwear. Formerly relegated to the working classes, denim is now suitable for the president. The motorcycle jacket, once cult, is approaching classic status. And how many times has someone erroneously predicted the death of skinny jeans? As our eyes adjusted to them, these fashions took on important roles in shoppers’ wardrobes, sometimes pushing aside hallowed fashion rules. On “Miami Vice” in 1984, Don Johnson shocked the status quo by wearing T-shirts under his tailored jackets. The necktie never fully recovered.
Only time will tell if this is more than a fad, but designers who built their repute on gravity-defying heels suddenly find themselves with showrooms full of heels that feel a little last-season. “I know this isn’t [the] fashion right now,” conceded Christopher Suarez, president of the Nicholas Kirkwood shoe label, last month in Paris. He was surveying Mr. Kirkwood’s spring 2015 collection—dozens of vividly colorful, artfully shaped high heels inspired by Japanese poster art.
A revolution in women's shoes has women doffing heels for flats and wearing them places flats were once rarely seen. WSJ's Christina Binkley and Tanya Rivero discuss. Photo: Marc Jacobs
Mr. Kirkwood’s towering platform heels made him a fast-rising star with his own stores in London, New York, and Las Vegas and a controlling-stake investment from LVMH. But he says he is now fending off demands from luxury retailers that he launch spongy-soled running shoes—the antithesis of any design he has ever done. He says he is resisting the pressure for fear that sneakers would overtake the shoes he is known for.
There was a time, just a few seasons ago, when high fashion in shoes meant platform heels. Designers like Mr. Kirkwood and Alexander McQueen “inverted the platforms,” experimenting with the sort of cantilevering used by construction engineers to balance shoes on a platform under the toe. Francesco Russo, then at Sergio Rossi, built his reputation on pitching celebrities’ feet at impossible angles while revealing ample toe cleavage on the red carpet.
Christian Louboutin’s spike heels looked sadistically sexy. But women were soon wearing them to work and to dinner, and growing accustomed to an extra 4- or 5-inch boost in height. The flimsy, support-free ballet flats many women wore for walking were hardly better than heels. Fashion footwear was a podiatrist’s cash cow.
Flat shoes with toe room looked frumpy by comparison. It seemed sexy hookup shoes had become the norm for dressy women’s footwear. But when they fell, they fell hard.
The revolution, like so many, started with several small fires. Isabel Marant popularized wedge-heeled basketball shoes, their springy rubber heels a bicultural crossover between sporty and sexy. Then Phoebe Philo put a few pairs of fur-lined Birkenstocks on her spring 2013 runway. To many of the platform-heeled editors in the audience, it was like viewing a cool mountain stream after a long desert trek with an empty canteen.
At roughly the same time, an Yves Saint Laurent exhibition in Paris was stoking the desires of many designers to re-explore Le Smoking, Mr. Saint Laurent ’s gender-bending poke at women’s evening wear. This led to more masculine looks for women, such as tuxedos, pressed white shirts, creased trousers. Along came shoes to match—wing tips, oxfords, brogues. Prada did thick-soled “brothel creepers”—a masculine shoe with thick crepe soles—for women.
Then, this year, came “norm core,” more a mood than a style, marked by a sudden fascination with the sort of clothing non-fashionistas consider normal: chino pants, denim jackets, and the Nike Air Max. Such clothing is anything but normal to the fashion-obsessed. Hence it is rebellious and exciting. To eyes adjusted to the studded Birkenstock and the alligator tassel-toe Oxford, it wasn’t a particularly far leap to the $695 Balenciaga metallic running shoe.
These days, Christian Louboutin, so recently king of the towering heel, is rolling out high-top sneakers embellished with python or calf hair. Pierre Hardy has trimmed his sneakers in fur. Fausto Puglisi, a rising Italian fashion star, put bejeweled Adidas slides on his Spring runway. Prada put the wingtip in the design blender with athletic shoes and came up with the ultimate ugly-chic crossover: the “wingtip brogue platform sneaker.”
Prices for these shoes aren’t lower than the heels that preceded them. Louboutin’s crystal-studded high-tops will set the buyer back $2,595 at Barneys New York. Comme des Garcons’ playful take on Chuck Taylors are a relative bargain at $140.
For now, flats appear to be settling in for the long haul. High-end stores are building sprawling collections of high-fashion sneakers, hiking sandals and other orthopedic-look footwear.
Even the heel-obsessed are weighing a change. Watching front-row denizens such as Vogue’s Sally Singer, cult retailer Ikram Goldman, street-style star Anna Dello Russo, and Leandra Medine of the blog Man Repeller pad by with comfy feet during last month’s shows was tempting for high-heel stalwarts. Cindi Leive, the 5-foot-2-inch editor in chief of Glamour magazine, said she was weighing the possibilities. She has taken to wearing high-top sneakers on weekends and brogues to drop her children off at school.

But there is one place flat shoes won’t take her—and it suggests there will continue to be a place for the high heel. “I totally and completely endorse the sneaker trend. I think it’s chic and also just good for womankind,” Ms. Leive said this week. “But I like to assume my work height for the office.”