Chiara Benedetti
Fashion Director · April 22, 2026 · 6 min read
In 1989, Maison Martin Margiela split the toe of a shoe and called it a collection. Thirty-seven years later, it is on the feet of everyone from gallery directors to teenage streetwear collectors.
The tabi boot debuted on a Paris runway in April 1989. Martin Margiela, presenting only his second collection, sent models down the catwalk in thigh-high suede boots with split toes — an adaptation of the traditional Japanese tabi sock, which separates the big toe to accommodate thong sandals. Fashion critics were divided. The split toe suggested deformity, or surgery, or something between the two.
The shoe went away, then came back, then went away again. Margiela himself retired from fashion in 2009 without public announcement, a characteristically theatrical disappearance. The house he founded was acquired by Diesel owner OTB Group and relaunched under new creative direction, with the tabi as the brand's most potent hereditary claim.
Today, the tabi is ubiquitous — which would seem to contradict the logic of its appeal, which was always transgression. But ubiquity in fashion is not the same as familiarity. The tabi remains visually striking on every foot it encounters. There is no version of it that reads as conventional.
The current range extends from 395 euros (low block heel) to 2,200 euros (limited collaboration editions). The silhouette has expanded too: tabi sneakers, tabi mules, tabi slingbacks. The house releases seasonal colorways — metallics for autumn, pastel leathers for spring — but the essential shape has not changed since that 1989 sketch.
Fashion's relationship with the tabi is partly about the shoe and partly about what choosing it signals. To wear a tabi in 2026 is to announce a certain fluency: you know the reference, you can carry the oddity, you are not dressing for approval. The shoe requires commitment.
Margiela, wherever he is, has made no comment.
