Fashion label launches ‘human skin boots’ in time for Halloween

A fashion brand has caused a stir online by announcing the release of new boots that look like human skin.

Canadian design duo Matieres Fecales - French for “Fecal Matter” - is selling boots that come with “individual toes, devil horns and heels in the shape of bones, all in a flesh tone that transforms the wearer’s legs into something otherworldly”, the Daily Mail says.

The boots start at $10,000 (£5,931) a pair and are the brand’s debut in footwear, the site adds, noting that the design has been “dividing the internet”, with commenters on the brand’s Instagram branding them everything from “disturbing” to a “work of art”.

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Fecal Matter founders Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran, who are known for their fantastical, horror-tinged designs, originally released a photo of the boots that were Photoshopped and not wearable.

“For the duo, making these shoes wearable was to prove that their altered world on Instagram could be translated onto the sidewalks,” says Vogue.

Bhaskaran told the site: “We can get this alien look and present it and tweak it with Photoshop and make it look really realistic.

“But at the same time, there is always this dysphoria in us. There is this urge inside of us to take what we do on the Internet and try to create that via real life. That is what we are doing with the shoes.”

The duo worked with the artist Sarah Sitkin, who specialises in creating replicas of bodies and body parts.

Dalton added that the designs for the shoes are bespoke, saying: “You get the fittings and the customisations. For even me to get the shoe, I have to stand and each of my legs have to be perfectly moulded.”