Jeremy Scott’s Tails

Jeremy Scott makes sneakers that actually offend some people, which is probably the highest compliment you can pay a designer. The tail thing—these weird appendages hanging off the heel or the side of the shoe—is his move. It’s dumb and bold and completely uninterested in making sense to anyone but him.

At Paris Fashion Week he did an interview where he got into it about why shoes need tails, what Blade Runner has to do with his new collection, Kanye West, the whole thing. The questions are more interesting than the shoe talk you usually get, because they’re not about comfort or sales or what color’s trending. They’re about what the shoe actually means.

The tails aren’t just weird for weirdness’s sake. There’s a philosophy underneath it—a refusal to make something polite or obvious. Blade Runner shows up because that aesthetic is fundamentally uncomfortable, deliberately ugly in a future-focused way. Kanye’s in there because he’s another guy willing to burn it all down and start with a shape that doesn’t fit anything.

It’s the opposite of incremental design, which is most of what fashion is. You take last year’s sneaker, adjust the curve, change the color, call it progress. Scott’s asking different questions. What if the shoe looked alive? What if it made you feel wrong? What if it looked like nothing anyone’s ever seen?

I’ll never wear them myself—too much attention, too much faith in my own taste. But there’s something pure about it. He’s saying: this is what a shoe should be. Take it or don’t. That’s the only way to actually make something new.