Chanel’s Barefoot Sandals Bring “Naked Fashion” To Footwear

Whether they end up on red carpets or straight into fashion meme culture, Chanel’s barefoot sandals are impossible to ignore.

Fashion’s obsession with barely-there dressing has officially reached the feet. At the Chanel Resort 2027 show in Biarritz, creative director Matthieu Blazy introduced what the internet is now calling the “barefoot sandal” or “shoeless shoe” and naturally, it sparked debate. But what exactly is it? The design resembles a surreal sandal that covers only the heel, leaving the rest of the foot almost entirely exposed. Held together with delicate ribbons wrapped around the ankle, the shoe looked almost unfinished at first glance, which is exactly why everyone started talking about it.

The collection itself was deeply tied to Biarritz, the French seaside town where Gabrielle Coco Chanel opened her first couture salon in 1915. Blazy leaned into that history through coastal references woven across the show: fish-scale sequins, swim caps, striped resortwear, waterproof flap bags, raffia textures, and airy silhouettes designed to feel relaxed rather than rigid. Chanel’s barefoot sandals fit naturally into that narrative of freedom and movement, inspired by the idea of walking along the beach with shoes half-on, half-off, subtly tracing back to the house’s seaside roots.

More importantly, the shoe taps into a larger fashion shift. Over the past few years, footwear has steadily moved towards minimalism and experimentation. Ballet flats came back. Ultra-thin sandals replaced chunky sneakers. Split-toe tabis became mainstream. Brands have increasingly questioned how much of a shoe actually needs to exist. Chanel simply pushed that idea to an extreme.

Our take? It works better as a fashion statement than an actual shoe.

Luxury fashion has increasingly moved towards pieces that function more as conversation starters than practical clothing. Chanel’s barefoot sandals join a growing list of intentionally bizarre fashion moments designed to provoke reactions as much as admiration. Balenciaga turned towel skirts, destroyed sneakers, tape bracelets, and giant platform Crocs into viral fashion debates. Prada recently faced backlash after sandals resembling traditional Kolhapuri chappals appeared on its runway without initially acknowledging their Indian roots, sparking wider conversations around cultural appropriation and luxury fashion’s tendency to repackage everyday items as high fashion.

The Chanel shoe sits within that same ecosystem of fashion absurdity, but it feels slightly more self-aware. Matthieu Blazy is not pretending these are practical. If anything, the exaggerated impracticality is what makes them interesting. They exist almost entirely as an image: a shoe reduced to its most minimal form until it barely qualifies as footwear anymore.

And honestly, fashion has always loved this kind of theatrical nonsense. Alexander McQueen had the Armadillo heels. Maison Margiela made Tabi shoes, inspired by split-toe footwear, mainstream despite people initially calling them unsettling. Even Balenciaga’s Trash Bag became a statement piece when Chinese actress Zhang Jingyi was spotted carrying it on the red carpet. Apparently, the stranger the item, the stronger the fashion signal.

That is why Chanel’s barefoot sandal works. Not because it is wearable, but because it perfectly captures where luxury fashion is right now: less interested in practicality and more interested in creating a moment people cannot stop discussing online. And in that sense, the shoes already succeeded before they even hit stores.

What makes the collection interesting is that the barefoot heel does not feel gimmicky purely for shock value. It still connects back to Chanel’s history of relaxed seaside dressing and Blazy’s more playful interpretation of the house codes. Whether the trend survives beyond editorials and celebrity styling remains to be seen, but as a runway moment, it already did exactly what luxury fashion hopes to do: make people react.