Marc Jacobs Has a Whole New Shoe For Fall 2023
Shannon Adducci
Style Director
For years now, Marc Jacobs has been known for one shoe: the mega platform. Iterations of the Lili style, with its gigantic chunky heels and row of extreme straps have graced the feet of everyone from Lady Gaga and Dua Lipa to Paris Hilton and a Met Gala’d Kendall Jenner.
But for the designer’s fall ’23 runway show, the platform was no more. In its place was the diametrically opposed ballet flat.
The show, which was held in the New York Public Library (the designer’s new show venue for the past few seasons after a long tenure at the Park Avenue Armory), whizzed by on the runway in just three minutes. During that time, models walked the library floor in mini everything: mini skirts, mini dresses, hot pants.
In place of Jacobs’s signature platforms was a series of black patent leather ballet flats, done in a pointed toe and paired with simple white ankle socks. Many of the looks were also outfitted with sheer black hosiery, cut off at the ankles.
Watch on FN
The new flat is part of a wave of pointed toe styles that have popped up in fall ’23 collections, and the fact that Jacobs singled out the shoe on his runway gives the ballet flat a firm stamp of approval as a trend likely to trickle down from the runways to contemporary lines and other markets in coming seasons. The ballet flat could also signal the end of the chunky lug sole and the super-high platform — at least for now in the fast-paced fashion trend cycle.
The flat shoe also showed up on the designer himself. Jacobs, who has been known to sport his own platforms in the past, was seen seated in the front row during the show’s rehearsal wearing a pair of his own ballet flats. His pair was done in a black velvet material, punctuated with a tiny bow.
The new age of the ballet flat may be near, but or anyone mourning the dearth of platforms on Jacobs’s fall ’23 runway, the show’s front row — lined with sky-high white Lili platforms from the fall ’22 collections, plus a few other iterations — was proof that the designer’s mega heels aren’t going anywhere just yet.
