It’s not often a familiar object is completely reinvented. Even more rare, is when that reinvention is a universal success. Even more rare than that rare, is when the object is shoes.

Shoes are just so, fucking, shoes aren’t they? With their laces and soles. And stupid holes to put your foot in. They’ve got heels, vamps (whatever they are) and, you know, other bits. They’re so shoes.

Fortunate then for Rei Kawakubo, of Comme des Garcons – apparently the only living person capable of tackling these big issues.

Showing a complete mastery of contemporary shoemanship, she offers these in her Comme des Garcons SS15 collection.

Over at Style.com, Tim Blanks sees a historical reference to a 14^th century shoe known as a krakow. While at Dazed they’re,  “tusked winklepickers.” Here, they are nothing less than the most important development in shoery since Homo heidelbergensis first sellotaped some turtle shells to his feet to nip across the lava to buy some crisps.

Let’s look at the pluses. Obvs they look really cool. That’s a given. They make you look a bit like a paraplegic sprinter. Again cool. You could use them to lift girls skirts up. Because, you know, girls always find that dead funny. You could, pretend you’re Blackadder. You could… transport a bushel of doughnuts on them. There’s probably some more. I’ll have a think. Anyway, they’ll be at Dover Street around February 2015, with a stratospheric price tag no doubt. You could, of course, wait for the sales, but by then they might be out of fashion. And you wouldn’t want to look ridiculous.