Here Are The World's Most Extraordinary Shoe Designs, Shared On Virtual Shoe Museum By Liza Snook (30 Pics)

Liza Snook, (shoe) curator, collector & connector based in the Netherlands, continued to share the origin story of Virtual Shoe Museum and her involvement with shoe designers: “To capture and share my passion, I created the website VirtualShoeMuseum.com in 2004 together with my partner and interaction designer Taco Zwaanswijk (Stainless Media). Besides that, I have been working as an image editor for the yearly shoe calendars of Workman Publishers New York since 2008. I also judge at various design schools in the Netherlands and abroad, give lectures, and help young designers to kick-start their careers. From the digital collection, I started to create and organize exhibitions about shoes in art and design, in collaboration with various museums, galleries, and events around the world.”

“VirtualShoeMuseum.com is a digital platform for shoe enthusiasts and professionals, where you can search for shoes by designer, color, type, or material. On the homepage, you will find a shoe of the day, a list of upcoming shoe exhibitions, and a blog. You can find an extensive choice of shoes: wearable shoes, paintings, sculptures, illustrations, or videos. There is a big section of shoes in the 'material' menu where you can find designs made of leather, textile, 3D-printed, jellyfish, glass, sugar, blood, denim, seaweed, and many more.”

Besides the website, Liza also curates real-life shoe exhibitions. She wrote: “In 2009 I started with a 10 'real' shoes booth at the GDS shoe fair in Düsseldorf, Germany, which expanded in the following years with more shoes and continued in Dongguang, China. In 2013, the exhibition 'Starker Auftritt – Experimental Shoe Design', consisting of 120 experimental shoes, was on show at the Grassi Museum for Applied Arts in Leipzig, Germany. This exhibition was the start of years of worldwide exhibitions: ‘SHOEting Stars’ and ‘Shoes in Senses’ in Austria, ‘Shoe Show’ in Kuwait and UAE, ‘HIGH HEELS’ in Germany, ‘Shoe Magic’ in Hungary, and ‘SHOETOPIA’ in the USA, amongst many others. On the show this year: ‘Shoe Fantasies’ in Pécz, Hungary, and from September participating in ‘Death and the Devil’ in Düsseldorf, Germany.”

As you have already noticed, most of the designs are not the peak comfort for your feet, and some are just sculptures of shoes, rather than footwear. We asked Liza to share her look on design choices that prioritize aesthetics over practicality. “In our collection, you will find many shoes that prioritize aesthetics over practicality; the category ‘experimental’ is by far the largest. With the developments of the techniques like 3D printing and AI, this will only grow. I find it very interesting when you have to look twice to see if it is a shoe when the shoe shapes don’t follow the foot shape…”

Liza shared how she strikes a balance between artistic expression and functional design in the footwear collections she curates: “The range of shoes is very wide. Some approach it from the perspective of construction and expression, others from the study of materials and technique. The multifaceted potential of shoes as a creative medium is reflected not only in the shoes themselves but also in installations, photographs, and videos. I try to show shoes that are unique works of art and shoes that make a statement or have a function like planting seeds, feeding birds, transforming from sneakers to slippers, or are made/re-made from waste materials. From the large database, I can make selections per topic.”

We asked Liza to tell us more about a few of the designers that interested her in their approach. She wrote: “It is very hard to pick shoe examples from the Virtual Shoe Museum because every shoe on the website has its own quality, technique, novel material, or story, so I selected a few different shoe projects to highlight. Sometimes you have to look twice and sometimes projects touch you.”

“First one is Joyce de Gruiter (NL). She has been fascinated by high heels since her childhood. As a child, she was enamored with her mother’s Chanel shoes. Joyce knows that life is simply too boring with unwieldy footwear, something that every woman (and man) understands. She transformed women's and men's shoes into a glamourous contemporary statement, a fetish object, a deadly weapon, an architectural tower, and in all the iterations, an object of high artistic expression.”

“Then there is Rémi Vergnanini (B), who is a model, costume designer, and shoemaker based in Belgium. Currently studying at d’ Academie Beeld Sint-Niklaas (former SASK) in Belgium.”

“The third one is Jo Cope (UK), a female artist and conceptual craftswoman who has been pushing the formal boundaries of fashion for almost two decades. Jo’s interest is in creating a new role for fashion, creating socially active and highly crafted vessels, that can exist and communicate both on and off the body.”

“And last but not least: Shanshan Yang (China), who graduated in footwear design from the London College of Fashion in 2023.”

Liza shared her hopes on what she would like for people to take away from this collection of shoes. “I hope to share my passion for shoes in art and design and to promote the work of so many talents in various fields of art and design. So be amazed by the wide variety of shoes that make you wonder, think, and smile.”

And lastly, she added: “The start of this platform has brought me so much new inspiration, friendships, amazing adventures, and opportunities… shoe people are nice people.”