Each pair is sold for $850.
Months after debuting Crocs on the runway, luxury fashion designer Balenciaga unleashed its new collection of platform Crocs for preorder.
The fashion company debuted its crocs collaboration with Crocs on a Paris runway last fall as part of its Spring 2018 Ready-to-Wear collection. But they weren’t your run-of-the-mill ugly foam-like shoes.
The shoes were 10 cm high platforms, reminiscent of those platform flip flops everyone owned in 2003, and “encrusted with Balenciaga gibbits and what looked like the kind of plastic fridge magnets sold in airports,” Vogue critiqued. The fashion world was not prepared to see Crocs be strutted down the runway.
Forbes published a similar article dissing the shoe: “There was nothing refined about them: a nearly four-inch wedge with an indelicately rounded toe and the top of which had been decorated with little brightly colored doodads — the Balenciaga logo, a small molded rose, a tiny face of a dog.”
Despite the harsh criticism from the fashion elite, the shoes were unveiled for presale the morning of Feb. 1 on the Barneys New York website. The footwear comes in two colors, pink and a dark tan hue called “toast.” Each pair costs $850.
Demma Gvasalia, the creative director of Balenciaga, told Vogue he found Crocs “incredibly modern” after first wearing them over the summer.
“It’s a very innovative shoe,” he told Vogue. “It’s light, it’s a one-piece foam mould and to me these kind of techniques and working with these kind of materials is very Balenciaga.”
It turns out Gvasalia was right, and the Balenciaga runway must have made the unthinkable shoe look fly as heck, because the footwear’s presale stock was completely sold out by noon.
Will 2018 be the year of Crocs? They’re certainly shaping up to be the must-have of the season, and there is speculation they will be abundant at New York Fashion Week, which is just days away. 2018 is already a wild year.