In June 2023, at the Comme des Garcons Homme Plus SS24 show in Paris, models walked out in derbies with two toe boxes. Some pairs set the second toe beside the first. Others stacked it on top. Rei Kawakubo's line for the collection was "In order to find a new world we have to go beyond reality," and the footwear carried the idea further than any jacket could. Highsnobiety photographed the shoes up close and noted the extra toe box had an inside opening for a second foot. Functional, somehow.
The maker's name barely registered outside Japan. Kids Love Gaite is a one-designer shoe label from Tokyo: Shintaro Yamamoto, a workshop in Asakusa, and close to two decades of turning classic shoe forms into objects that look wrong until you look closer.
Shintaro Yamamoto. Photo: Kentaro Takahashi for The New York Times.
London first, then Asakusa
Yamamoto's own account is short. Born in Tokyo, sent to England at 15 in 1990. Study at Camberwell College of Arts, then shoemaking at The Old Curiosity Shop, Daita Kimura's London store. Back in Tokyo in 2000, years of training in Asakusa, the traditional shoemaking district. Kids Love Gaite starts in 2008, the same year Beams began running order events for the label.
The London part matters more than the dates. The Old Curiosity Shop worked from the methods of John Moore, the punk shoemaker behind Vivienne Westwood's most famous footwear, who died in 1989 as his House of Beauty and Culture closed. In an interview with Highsnobiety's Tom Barker, Yamamoto calls Moore his biggest inspiration and keeps Moore posters in his office. The label's formula is readable in one line: English subculture shapes, Japanese artisan construction, leather throughout.
On its own line, the shoes are classics with a twist of the knife. Brogues with hand-steamed wrinkles. Boots with the leather cut away to show an orange inner. The Walt, a bulbous-toed derby Yamamoto says was inspired by Dr. Martens steel toe derbies and Mickey Mouse. There have been collaborations with Clarks and Beams along the way. The base is always proper welted construction, made by the two shoemakers he works with at a workshop outside Tokyo.
Yamamoto among shoe displays. Photo: Kentaro Takahashi for The New York Times.
The CdG years
Kawakubo began sending Homme Plus footwear to Yamamoto around SS24. TheFashionDB's record of the collaboration says the first brief asked for a leather shoe that looked implausible but stayed functional, and the conversations produced the double-foot construction. Two versions went out, side by side and stacked. The idea survived into retail, which is the rare part. Runway jokes usually die on the runway. Sivasdescalzo carried the derby at $2,975, made in Japan, and it is now out of stock in every size. Maxfield in Los Angeles stocked a variant at $2,955 and sold through at $886 in final sale.
The next marker was the FW25 Homme Plus show, a collection titled "To hell with war" and built as a protest out of reimagined military clothing. Yamamoto's contribution was combat boots with the sole bent at a right angle, so the toe box points at the sky. They balance on the upturned toe. Barker describes one standing on a shelf in the Tokyo studio, shaft upright, nothing holding it. There were 35 looks in the show and every one wore his shoes. "I was crying, just crying the whole time," Yamamoto told him.
He is also picky about who he works with. "I have to like their creations and we have to respect each other, otherwise I won't make shoes for them." In March 2025 the New York Times profiled him under the headline "When Brands Need a Wild Shoe, They Hire This Man." By TheFashionDB's log the Homme Plus relationship ran from SS24 through SS27, with Undercover pre-fall 2026 steel-capped derbies and KIDILL AW26 studs alongside.
The pieces you can actually hunt
Almost nothing was made, and what reached stores was distributed thin. That is the whole reason these shoes hold value. Elusive currently indexes 277 Comme des Garcons Homme Plus pieces. One of them is the Kids Love Gaite collaboration itself: black leather brogues, UK 9, last listed at 6,633 DKK through SVRN in Chicago. Sold out, one stockist, one listing. The double-footed derby passed through retail briefly.
My read: the double-footed derby is easy to file under meme footwear. It shouldn't be. The construction is real leatherwork from people who trained for decades, and the joke is load-bearing. Gimmicks from a strong show vanish once the season turns. Well-made gimmicks from a strong show don't. Three years on, these are the shoes people still ask about. A more conventional pair of Kids Love Gaite brogues is still listed on Elusive.
Where to look
- Kids Love Gaite Leather Brogues in Black, Comme des Garcons Homme Plus, UK 9 on Elusive, 6,633 DKK last listing, alert available
- Comme des Garcons Homme Plus on Elusive, 277 pieces indexed
- Search "kids love gaite" on Elusive
