The Armadillo shoes: The 12-Inch Fantasy That Changed Fashion Forever
Design Ideas and Random Thoughts
Read Time: 2-3 min
Wise words:
“A dull truth w“Character is who you are when nobody’s watching.”
– John Wooden, legendary basketball coach and life philosopher who championed integrity, discipline, and character as the true measures of success.
Behavioral effect of the week:
🧠 The Hawthorne effect
In the late 1920s, researchers at the Hawthorne Works factory in Chicago discovered something unexpected: workers improved their productivity not because of better lighting or equipment — but simply because they knew they were being observed.
This became known as the Hawthorne Effect — the phenomenon where awareness of observation changes behaviour.
The 12-Inch Fantasy That Changed Fashion Forever.
In October 2009, at Paris Fashion Week, Alexander McQueen unveiled Plato’s Atlantis — a vision of human evolution in a world submerged by climate change. Out of that narrative rose a shape never before seen in fashion: the Armadillo Shoe.
Lee McQueens original pencil drawing of the Armadillo shoe
Standing 12 inches high, carved from wood, with a 9-inch heel, the Armadillo looked less like footwear and more like the fossil of an alien creature. Its bulbous, convex silhouette hid the entire foot, forcing the wearer into an impossible pointe. It was sculpture as footwear — or perhaps footwear as metamorphosis.
McQueen drew on influences from Allen Jones, Leigh Bowery, and the biomechanical art of H. R. Giger, (check out our H.R Geiger newsletter edition) fusing eroticism, fear, and transformation. Working with Georgina Goodman, he orchestrated a five-day manufacturing process involving 30 artisans and three Italian factories including Formificio Romagnolo for the shoe lasts. Each pair was hand-carved, lined, and fitted with two zippers — half armour, half exoskeleton.
When McQueen’s producer, Sam Gainsbury, warned that the shoes were unwalkable, he famously replied:
“If they fall, they fall.”
Three top models refused to walk in the show. None of those who did fell — a small miracle in 12-inch heels. The audience gasped as the models stalked the runway, half-human, half-creature, like beings from a post-apocalyptic ocean world.
Only 24 pairs exist. Twenty-one were made in 2009; three more in 2015 for a UNICEF charity auction, which fetched $295,000and were bought by Taylor Kinney for Lady Gaga. Gaga wore them in her Bad Romance video, fusing McQueen’s fantasy into pop mythology.
Critics were split. Some called them grotesque, others divine. To many, they embodied McQueen’s obsession with beauty and fear — the edge where art stops being comfortable. Vogue later called them “one of the 20 most iconic shoes ever made.”
👉 More than fashion, the Armadillo became a question: what happens when design escapes the limits of the body? When shoes no longer serve to walk, but to transform?
My Recommends this week:
📘 “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty" by Andrew Bolton
The definitive visual archive of McQueen’s genius. Essays, sketches, and rare images trace his themes of fantasy, death, and transformation.
👉 Check it out here
🎧 Fish.audio
This is so much fun and was recommended to me by one of my Ai sharing freinds. Fish Audio is an AI-powered voice platform that provides realistic text‑to‑speech, voice cloning, and emotional voice generation tools for creators, developers, and businesses to produce studio-quality audio in multiple languages.
👉 Check it out here