The Margiela Tabi Boot celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. Along the way, it's become a membership card among fashion's most elite dressers.

How Margiela's Tabi Boot Became a Status Symbol for Fashion's EliteThe “uncanny valley” is a robotics term dating back to Japanese professor Masahiro Mori in 1970. It hypothesizes that as a robot takes on more human characteristics — eyes, a face, five fingers, weird Terminator-esque skin — there’s a certain threshold where your response to the automaton turns from empathetic to strong revulsion.

In other words, there’s a line between barely human and fully human that tends to gross people out. And one particularly polarizing Japanese-inspired shoe from designer Martin Margiela may prove that fashion has an uncanny valley too.

Let’s go back to Paris in 1988. A time before the Internet and Instagram turned fashion into an integral part of pop culture. Back then, the industry was still a closely-guarded secret, only accessible to a privileged few. But even then, fashion had its iconoclasts, and Belgian designer Martin Margiela’s debut show marked a paradigm shift.

Margiela’s tabi boot, largely based on the affordable Japanese “jika-tabi” shoes still worn by Japanese construction workers, features a circular heel, metal clasps known as “kohase” at the rear closure, and a signature split toe at the front. The big toe goes on one side, with the remaining four housed in the other. They’re essentially upscale ninja shoes that give the foot a cloven hoof appearance.

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