Every New York Fashion Week, certain designer items emerge as the fashion crowd’s favorites. For example, Vogue reports that last year, everyone was wearing the Prada logo tank tops and minimal strappy heels by The Row. This past week, however, dainty Manolos were eclipsed by one shoe destined to go viral: MSCHF’s big red boots, aptly named the Big Red Boot.
Photos of the aptly-named shoe were first released on February 6 and since then, it’s been colloquially dubbed the “Astro Boy” boot, in reference to the cartoon’s famous footwear of Osama Tezuka’s 1963 anime character.
If you’re unfamiliar with MSCHFSneakers, they’re the experimental fashion brand that’s a sub-label of the Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF, and the brand loves using their product releases to make a statement (often controversial ones). They’ve released boots that resemble medical casts, Birkinstock sandals made out of Hermès Birkins, and even Satan sneakers in collaboration with Lil Nas X that featured a drop of real blood in the soles. The label loves to push the boundaries of fashion and, more importantly, to make headlines.
Their latest release – which looks like something Mario from Super Mario would wear – retail for $350, are made of TPU rubber and an EVA mid-outsole, and take design cues from a video game. “Cartoonishness is an abstraction that frees us from the constraints of reality,” the press release for the boots read. “If you kick someone in these boots, they go boing!”
In the name of “experimentation,” MSCHF co-founder Daniel Greenberg told Highsnobiety, “The Big Red boot is a realization of a specific sort of cartoonish abstraction of a shoe.” He added, “You never design shoes to be shaped like feet. Big Red Boots are REALLY not shaped like feet, but they are EXTREMELY shaped like boots.”
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Photo Credit: Zyra Lee Zhang / Shutterstock.com