steel heel bungee cord boots

Dirk Bikkembergs treated the body like sports equipment. Where the other members of the Antwerp Six draped, deconstructed, and poeticized, Bikkembergs strapped things on. The steel heel boots are the clearest example. Constructed from leather with a metal heel and bungee cord lacing (an elastic closure system borrowed from outdoor gear), the boots brought the football pitch into the fashion show with a literalness that made some people uncomfortable. Bikkembergs, who graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1982 alongside Van Noten, Demeulemeester, and the rest, was the group’s odd one out: the jock in a room of poets. The bungee cord lacing gave the boots a functional tension that traditional leather lacing could not match, a fit that tightened under stress and released under rest. The metal heel clicked on hard floors like a warning.