If you were on any street style blog in the 2010s, chances are you would have come across a particular mutt breed of footwear: the sneaker heel. French designer Isabel Marant’s wedge sneaker, launching the trend with its release in 2011, was perhaps the most coveted of all. A suede-panelled basketball-style shoe with a puffy tongue, the wedge spawned an outbreak of copycats in the high fashion world, from Giuseppe Zanotti to Marc Jacobs.
The striking shoe was everywhere – on the feet of models off-duty, fashion editors, celebrities and bloggers. Remember, this was a time before sneakers had been fully embraced by the fashion world and were acceptable footwear at work or on red carpets. The sneaker heel was a kind of gateway drug to fashion’s sneaker obsession – a bridge between smart and casual, street and catwalk.
2012 was peak sneaker wedge: Jennifer Lopez, Lindsay Lohan, Gisele Bundchen and Jessica Szohr.Credit: Getty Images
While the shoe hybrid eventually faded into obscurity, banished to the backs of wardrobes alongside other relics of the 2010s like chunky necklaces and coloured jeans, it has recently made a comeback.
The first signs that a sneaker heel renaissance was imminent were in the early 2020s. In 2021, Marant released a new version of her beloved sneaker heel, the “Balskee”, which was a couple of inches higher than the original. In August this year, the designer announced a collaboration with Converse featuring a version of her wedge heel.
Last month, Sarah Blakely, founder of pioneering shapewear brand Spanx, announced she was tackling a problem as old as time: uncomfortable heels. Her solution? Sneex, a mesh and suede trainer that marry the “comfort of a sneaker with the fun of a high heel”. And while Blakely has branded Sneex as a groundbreaking step for women’s footwear, sneaker heels have a long history.
Elizabeth Semmelhack, senior curator at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, says that since the earliest iterations of tennis shoes in the 1800s, there have been attempts to distinguish between men’s and women’s footwear.
As thinness became the feminine ideal after World War I and physical fitness started to be promoted to women, heels started being added to athletic shoes.
“You have these moments where female desirability and gender difference is impacting whether or not heels end up on athletic footwear,” explains Semmelhack.
A pair of heeled tennis shoes from Dominion Rubber Company Fleet Foot, ca. 1925. Credit: Hal Roth. Courtesy American Federation of Arts/Bata Shoe Museum.
When Isabel Marant’s sneaker wedge came to the fore in 2011, sneaker culture was starting to explode but remained in large part a boy’s club.
Semmelheck says that “the wedge sneaker allowed women to flirt with sneaker culture as opposed to being let into it.” She is suspicious of the return of the sneaker heel.
“It feels out of date. It’s like now that sneakers are so comfortable and popular ... let’s see if we can get women back into heels by making them a sneaker. Whereas before it used to be, let’s keep women out of sneakers by offering a high heel version.”
“I just question, why now?”
Simon “Woody” Wood, editor-in-chief of the footwear bible Sneaker Freaker, says sneaker heels started to grow in popularity in the 2000s with counterfeiters and bootleg factories, many in China, who would take shoes from name brands like Nike and put their own spin on them. Many independent makers continue the legacy today, like British brand Ancuta Sarca, which upcycles unwanted sneakers.
“They’re sort of Frankenstein creations. But they’re taking bits of sports shoes and turning them into really elegant, stylish looking women’s heels,” says Wood.
Part of their charm, he says, lies in the paradox of marrying a heel with a sneaker – of taking the aesthetics of something designed for comfort and shaping it into something so distinctly associated with pain.
“That’s why they look so striking ... they’re just such an incongruous mash-up of two things,” says Wood.
He doesn’t think sneaker companies will start making their own sneaker heels anytime soon, since they’re so impractical. But like many other parts of bootleg culture, the imitator can end up becoming the influencer.
“The counterfeiters play this weird role where sometimes they’re copying what’s going on but unintentionally bring creativity to the game that’s unexpected, and it ends up influencing the direction of products.”
In 2021, for example, Miu Miu sent a pair of metallic soccer boot kitten heels down the runway. That same year, Comme Des Garçons partnered with Nike on a reimagination of their 1992 football boot.
Hip hop is one arena in which bootleg culture really shone, with Beyoncé donning a pair of custom sneakers in her 2005 music video for Check On It. In the closing moments of the video, the singer can be seen strutting around in pink sneaker stilettos from streetwear brand Bape. Crafted from hot pink patent leather, the shoes were custom-made by stylist Ty Hunter and thought to be the only heeled “Bapestas” in existence.
As Hunter told Complex in 2019, “I thought those boots were the coolest thing. They were so sexy ... and I took the sneakers to Miss Tina [Beyoncé’s mother] and said, ‘These would be cool if they had a heel,’ and she said, ‘Give it a try.’ This is before the sneaker tennis shoe or the sneaker heel had even hit.”
A repeat offender, Beyoncé donned a pair of sneaker heels once again in her 2011 music video for Love on Top, this time opting for a black Isabel Marant wedge. Fellow performers Nicki Minaj and Jennifer Lopez also brought the wedge to the stage.
As with most trends of yore, the sneaker craze of 2024 looks a little different to how it did in the 2010s. While the sneaker heel was typically styled with skinny jeans or leather pants, loose tanks and scarves, today’s adopters are pairing them with baggier silhouettes or mini skirts, for example.
The next trend to come back through fashion’s ever revolving door? My money’s on Jeffrey Campbell’s ankle-breaking Lita heels, the slightly dressier cousin of the sneaker heel.
Sneaker heels in the 2020s: Clockwise from left, Copenhagen Fashion Week, Isabel Marant x Converse, Isabel Marant “Balskee” wedge, Paris Fashion Week and Sneex.
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