Miu Miu’s Colorful Bandages on the Runway Come With a Much Deeper Story

Image Source: Getty / Estrop

When the industry cuts deep, try a Miu Miu bandage. In the fashion house’s spring show during Paris Fashion Week on Oct. 3, models walked the runway wearing unusually visible bandages on their feet. The designer bandages wrapped around toes and heels in a wide variety of vivid colors, peeking out from beneath embellished sandals as models made their way across the catwalk. “We got Band-Aids today. Show accessories – this is a gift,” Gigi Hadid said in a TikTok captured by Dazed. “It’s so sweet and kind, I love it. It’s the best day ever.”

Others, like fashion editor Stella Bugbee, had a slightly different interpretation, explaining that this kind of “intentional styling,” however discreet, might carry a bigger message. “It’s the end of fashion month and these feet have done a lot of walking in uncompromising shoes,” Bugbee wrote on her Instagram Stories. “Nice to see this sly little bit of intentional styling. It also happened to work with the aesthetics of the show.”

Sasha Payton, a model and content creator who walked in this year’s New York Fashion Week, provided more context about the industry’s complicated relationship with footwear. “A season or two ago, we saw so many models falling, or their shoes breaking, or them just removing their shoes altogether,” Payton tells POPSUGAR. Although brands make shoes for their models, they don’t always know the exact sizes for every person who ends up being cast, as Payton explains. That’s not to mention the heels models often wear for their many castings. “Even if they’re comfortable, heels are heels, and after a while, being in the streets, running up and down the stairs of the subway, it starts to ache.”

This comes shortly after a photo of a model’s blistered heels went viral following a repost from National Geographic on Instagram. Captured by Dina Litovsky, the photograph was taken backstage at a Jason Wu runway show in 2019, and it honed in on a model’s bright red heels, practically screaming out in pain from beneath slingback heels. “Over the years, I have witnessed models with feet that were calloused and covered in band-aids – the bruises resulting from a combination of a grueling schedule and the shoes themselves,” Litovsky wrote in a Sept. 20 post.

Following the discourse, there was hardly a heel in sight at the Miu Miu show, letting the colorful bandages take center stage. “It’s obviously very intentional,” Payton says. “Like let’s make it fun. Let’s do the whole colorful thing and make it an accessory because this is the reality; sometimes bruises and all of this stuff are a thing, so we might as well make it functional.”

To her point, in its show notes, Miu Miu explained the intention to explore the “rationale of beauty,” juxtaposing more contemporary styles with classic prototypes in fashion. “Garments devised for specific purpose, functions, and events are remixed in unanticipated combinations,” Miu Miu wrote. “A maillot de bain with a cocktail dress, a petticoat with a blazer.” Or even a bandage at Paris Fashion Week. While it’s not enough to completely cover up fashion’s wounded past with footwear, we have to admit it’s certainly a creative start.

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