A Moment for the Shoes at the Loewe Spring 2022 Show

Jonathan Anderson does it again.

Jonathan Anderson‘s runways for Loewe always attract an audience. But because the house’s strong suit has historically been in accessories, there tends to be a sharper focus on the shoes and handbags that the designer unveils each season, which have a track record of becoming “it” items among the fashion crowd.

In the days leading up to its Spring 2022 debut, Loewe (and Anderson) began teasing some of what we would see during its Paris Fashion Week show, particularly when it came to the accessories: close-ups of black leather sandals with pink birthday candle and red nail polish bottle for heels, of a rose getting crushed under the weight of someone’s step. Indeed, these playful, Dadaist shoes play a key role in a collection that the brand itself characterized as “neurotic, psychedelic, completely hysterical.”

“The Loewe Spring 2022 collection is an experimental statement that marks a point of departure, and opens a new chapter,” the show notes read. “Provocation, sensuality, movement and amusement break up the Loewe mould.”

The apparel — with its draping, sculptural elements, movement and play with proportion — is inspired by the “mannerist, hysterical world of Renaissance painter Pontormo,” per the show notes. Then, there’s the shoe reveal: a series of sandals and pumps where, in lieu of traditional heels, are “ready-made” objects, including a cracked egg, rose and previously-teased candle and nail polish, among other things.

These shoes “suggest fragility and spontaneity,” the brand explains, and speak to the other underlying themes and feelings that inform the Spring 2022 collection. Elsewhere in the footwear assortment, Loewe’s Flow Runner sneakers have been reissued in a translucent compostable plastic, and appear alongside Ugg-like boots covered in a soft teddy fabric.

With this collection, “new archetypes are defined,” the show notes suggest. “A collection that asks to be seen flowing in movement, as experimentation unfolds on living bodies in a real space.”

So… who will be the first to wear these ready-made heels off the runway?

See the full Loewe Spring 2022 line in the gallery, below.