Flattened: Why Haute Best Now Sit Almost on the Ground

The chunky dad shoe spent a decade on the runway. This winter, the houses setting the pace are cutting soles to a sliver and borrowing from ballet flats.

Prada named it honestly. The Collapse has an elasticated heel that folds inward, a nylon midfoot bracketed by suede at the toe and heel, and a sole so thin the whole shoe reads closer to a slipper than a trainer. It landed on Prada’s web store in December 2024 in six colorways at around $1,000, a slimmed retail version of a runway shoe that had carried a steel toe trim when Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons showed their Spring 2025 collection in Milan.

Almost two years on, it looks less like a novelty and more like the template. For most of the last decade the lux sneaker got bigger every season: stacked soles, padded collars, the dad shoe turned status object. The pairs setting the tone for Winter 2026 go the other way, with sole units pared to a few millimeters and uppers cut to follow the foot rather than bulk it out.

“Tennis Silk” de Repetto

Signal. What happened: luxury houses are replacing oversized shoe with ultra-slim, low-profile designs that borrow from dance shoes and dress shoe. Exact object: key styles include Prada’s Collapse, Saint Laurent’s Lewis, New Balance x Miu Miu’s 530 SL, Repetto’s Tennis Silk, and Miu Miu’s revived Bubble. When and where: all currently sold through the houses’ own stores and websites, at roughly €275 to €1,750.  Source: brand product pages and trade. Why it matters: the proportions of the haute shoe set the proportions of the entire outfit, and trousers, denim, and skirts are already being cut around a flatter shoe.\

The groundwork was laid a season earlier. Miu Miu’s 530 SL with New Balance, first shown at Paris Fashion Week for Spring 2024, took a familiar running sil and flattened it into something that paired with a slip skirt. Dries Van Noten’s leather-trimmed trainers from his final collection for his own label, shown that same season, pushed the idea further toward menswear. Maison Margiela’s Sprinter picked up co-signs from Harry Styles and Jacob Elordi in the summer of 2025. By then the shape had traveled well beyond Prada’s group: Lemaire sells a soft leather model that sits between shoe  and city shoe, and Jacquemus, Balmain, and Axel Arigato all carry narrow, low-slung versions of their own.

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The second strand pulls the sneaker toward dance. Saint Laurent’s Lewis is the clearest example: a low-top lace-up in calfskin or suede with a scrunched, elasticated heel counter and a thin, soft rubber sole. Laid flat it has the long, narrow line of a jazz oxford, and the resemblance to Repetto‘s Zizi is hard to miss.

That comparison carries weight in Paris. The Zizi, a supple white oxford Rose Repetto made for dancer Zizi Jeanmaire in the 1970s, became a civilian shoe once Serge Gainsbourg started wearing it everywhere, barefoot, with a suit. Repetto has now come at the trend from the other side, with a Tennis Silk sneaker that takes its own dance-shoe DNA and gives it laces and a court-shoe profile.\

Chloé and Dior have both put softer, more delicate constructions into this lane, in supple leather and jacquard canvas respectively. What they share with the Lewis and the Collapse is the structural choice underneath: minimal cushioning, flexible soles, and a shape that bends with the foot. These are shoes made to look good with a wide trouser pooling over them, not to run. Part of the appeal is practical, too. The Collapse ships with a removable leather insole, and its crushable heel makes it one of the few majestic shoe that packs almost flat into a weekend bag.

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Once the sole got thin, the decoration moved to the upper. Miu Miu’s Bubble, an archive style from the early 2000s, returned on the brand’s Fall 2026 runway in Paris in March, and hit stores this summer in two forms: a padded leather and suede version, and a technical nylon version covered in jeweled embroidery that WWD reported at $2,300, with several sizes already sold out in early August.

Maison Margiela

The Bubble is also the useful exception. Its namesake outsole is textured and rounded, so it carries more visual volume than the Collapse or the Lewis, even though the upper stays soft and close to the foot. On the runway the same sole also turned up under skin-tight knee-high boots and mule clogs, a sign Miu Miu sees it as a platform for a whole footwear family rather than a one-off. It suggests the next step is not simply thinner, but lighter looking with something to catch the eye. Miu Miu’s habit of doubled laces, a detail that has already spread to sportswear brands’ own takes, points the same way: when the sole has nowhere left to go, the decoration climbs up the shoe.

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Others are working the same seam. Valentino mixes split leather and nylon with ornamental detail, Maison Margiela gives its Replica a more handcrafted finish, and Cecilie Bahnsen threads charms through the laces of a soft leather pair, carrying her romantic dress vocabulary down to the ground. Across all of them the sole stays thin and the effort goes into the surface, which is where a shoe this flat has to earn its price.