| MM6 Maison Margiela x Havaianas debuted two experimental flip-flop designs in Milan in September 2026. The Slim 6Toe reshapes the sandal around a six-toed foot silhouette. The Top 6Layers stacks six differently shaped Havaianas soles and will remain runway-only. The commercial collaboration is scheduled to launch in May 2027, with pricing still unconfirmed. |
Milan rarely lets a flip-flop steal the show. Yet, at MM6 Maison Margiela’s Spring 2027 show, the humble Havaianas rubber sandal did exactly that. It appeared not as a beach afterthought, but as a piece of footwear engineering with a sixth toe and a stack of soles that looked lifted from an architectural model.
On paper, the pairing sounds unlikely. Havaianas are a Brazilian staple, sold by the millions in supermarkets and beach kiosks since 1962. MM6 Maison Margiela is the younger, more mischievous line under Maison Margiela, a brand founded on deconstruction and quiet subversion. You’d expect a straightforward branding exercise, a logo swap, nothing more, if you put the two together. But what showed up on the Milan podium was stranger and considerably more interesting.
The collaboration revolves around a single digit. Six, the number embedded in the MM6 name, became the organizing idea behind two new interpretations of the classic thong sandal. The first, called the Slim 6Toe, retains the familiar barefoot silhouette but adds an extra digit, making the sandal appear to have an extra toe. This small, deliberate glitch is the kind of visual joke that Margiela’s studio has built its reputation on for decades.
The second design takes this concept further. Named Top 6Layers, it stacks six different-shaped soles of Havaianas into an uneven platform, transforming a shoe famous for being flat and unassuming into something closer to a topographic model. This piece exists only for the runway. MM6 has confirmed that it will not be produced, which makes sense when you see it. The Top 6Layers is closer to a physical sketch than a shoe designed for sidewalks.
The project is worth watching not only for its novelty, but also for the thinking behind it. MM6 has spent years applying Martin Margiela’s original studio habits of taking recognizable, low-cost objects and running them through processes of repetition and distortion until they look unfamiliar again, and Havaianas offered ideal raw material. According to the brand, ninety-four percent of Brazilian households own at least one pair, and the silhouette is arguably as recognizable globally as a Birkenstock or Crocs clog. This is precisely the category to which luxury houses keep returning. Balenciaga did it with Crocs and Dior with Birkenstocks. Now, Margiela’s most experimental line is doing it with a two-euro beach sandal. The cheaper and more universal the object, the more room a design studio has to distort it into something worth talking about.
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MM6 describes its garments as pieces that come alive only once worn, finished by the person wearing them rather than by the label itself. Applied to footwear that is normally sold in bulk and rarely reviewed by critics, this idea takes on a sharper edge. The Slim 6Toe doesn’t just riff on a beach sandal; it asks the wearer to reconsider what a foot is supposed to look like inside one.
Pricing has not been confirmed, though it’s safe to assume the gap between a standard pair of Havaianas, usually under thirty euros, and an MM6 version will be considerable. Fans hoping to buy them will need patience. The full collection arrives in May 2027, and only the Slim 6Toe is expected to reach stores. The Top 6Layers will remain a runway exclusive, with an eight-month gap between the Spring 2027 show and its release. This gap speaks more to fashion’s comfort level with selling anticipation as the actual product than to production timelines. Ultimately, the sixth toe isn’t the main point. What MM6 is testing is how far a company can stretch a ten-euro item before it stops being a joke about mass consumption and becomes a reflection of it.
