Some items of clothing benefit from being connected. Bodysuits, for example, negate the need for underwear while also ensuring your top stays tucked in, while exercise tanks with built-in bras make dressing for workouts a breeze.
But pants with attached shoes? That’s something none of us asked for.
Except for Kim Kardashian, perhaps, who over the past few years has made Balenciaga’s “pantashoes” — a $3,000 hybrid garment comprised of skintight leggings with built-in stilettos — part of her everyday uniform.
Seeing as she’s worn the head-scratching style on “SNL,” at the Met Gala and, most recently, to Rite Aid with Pete Davidson, the Skims founder is clearly smitten.
And now, her apparent style twin Julia Fox — who just so happens to be dating Kardashian’s ex, Kanye West — is following suit.
For dinner with West at Craig’s in LA on Monday, Fox donned baggy Diesel jeans affixed to cowboy boots ($1,250), a gift from her recent dress-up date with the rapper.
While undeniably striking, these pant-heels (peels? hants?) beg several questions, such as:
- What happens if you try to wear them through airport security?
- How about if you show up at a no-shoes household?
- When it’s time to clean them, do you go to the dry cleaner or the cobbler?
- What’s the deal with sizing? Do you go with your pant size or your shoe size?
- If you can afford these four-figure Frankenpants, wouldn’t you rather just buy trousers and shoes you have the option of styling separately?
This fashion/footwear fusion didn’t start with Kardashian or Balenciaga, by the way. Nearly a decade ago, footwear designer Tamara Mellon dreamt up a style she called “legging boots,” which she’d pitched during her tenure at Jimmy Choo without success.
Celebrities like Taylor Swift, Karlie Kloss and, coincidentally, Kardashian couldn’t get enough. And in a wild twist, one of West’s other former flames, Irina Shayk, even rebooted the look as part of her collaboration with Mellon in October 2021.
“They did think I was crazy,” Mellon told InStyle in 2016. “Everyone has that ‘aha’ moment when they put them on, because they look so weird on the hanger. Really bizarre. And then they put them on and they’re like, ‘Oh! They’re actually really easy to wear.’”
Easy until you have to take the subway on a slushy day, that is.
