Benoit Meleard, the enfant terrible of the shoe-design industry, is just a little bit old news now, as his daring designs shocked the couture scene just about eight years ago. His 1999 collection ‘Cruel’ sent deep shock waves into the fashion world and soon were sported on covers and in spreads in fashion magazines all over the world, and by now they have been indicted into various fashion or design museums. Manolo Blahnik reported said about him: ‘I just adore that young Frenchman Benoit Meleard. His stuff is just so architecturally beautiful: it has a touch of weirdness.’ Architectural beauty and weirdness: that about sums up these designs:

Heel-less boots? Sky-high toe tips? Futuristic spirals, spheres, and circles? His creations challenge the idea that shoes are a mundane, practical object, and definitely push the limits of innovation and art. The concept is so bold and completely fracturing our expectations, that it makes us surrender in awe. When the absurd is beautiful, one embraces the absurd: there is no other choice.

His website has a good selection of his work (which nowadays, believe it or not, is much more wearable than the above). I cannot link to it because it’s made with that uber-annoying Flash design which makes navigation cumbersome, eyes weary, and the experience totally frustrating, and without which fashion designers wouldn’t even dream of having a website. (That is a subject of an essay, right there–and possibly of a dissertation for someone in the graphic design field). But where was I? Benoit Meleard shoes, that’s right. Go take a look, and enjoy!