Puffy soles, spongy uppers and protruding tentacles form these mutated sneakers for your tender feet

For some reason, if you think “shoes don’t have to be practical” in form, you’re possibly going to appreciate the next theoretical bubble in streetwear: inflatable, mutated creatures for your feet!

Unless you’re from Mars, these are little from a pair of shoes you’d don for a coffee with a sane date! But then, creativity has no bounds and that’s what makes my job interesting. I often come by such concepts that put the analytical mind to think, why? At times I arrive at a conclusion, at most officiations – like this one per se – it’s a little more to contemplate. Anyway!

Designer: UV-Zhu

Has the designer UV-Zhu gone overboard with the footwear? You’d be forgiven to think in the affirmative. To put things in the designer’s perspective, UV-Zhu is seasoned in toiling with everyday objects to ‘fashion’ them in outlooks that aren’t everyday fashion. And this aptly reflects in the footwear collection at hand. The silhouettes with puffy soles and spongy uppers may just have you gliding in them the moment you happen to step in, but would you?

The inflated soles present a lift up to the kicks thus adding to your height, while spokes and spikes in the others would make you tad uncomfy. That said, the colorful candies stuffed into the transparent fluff of the sole gives these conceptual uncanny a subtle, sweet advantage over the tentacle-laden mutated creatures.

Soft texture and a puffy nature of these “work of art” – as the designer chooses to call them – may find some takers in pop culture. However, of an unsettling nature, they are a little too fancy to my liking, and I’d prefer to pass. No hard feelings.