Shoe-topia: The weird, wacky and wonderful shoes of spring/summer 2013 Eyes down for the height of fashion. Luke Leitch reports on why designers are putting their souls into their shoes. If a front-row seat is worth having, it's not for the reasons you'd glean by reading Grazia. The true advantage of these hotly contested spots is not the being seen, but the seeing. And what an uninterrupted sight-line really lets you eyeball are the shoes. A few years ago, shoes served as little more than a full stop to the outfit above them. In a pre-recession period marked by a preponderance of supertight "body-con" dresses, those full stops tended to be conventionally lascivious, Louboutin-ish foot flashers in classic shapes. Now, though, all change: high-fashion footwear has made strides into new, irreverent territory. Take next summer's shoes: the designs presented in the just-finished spring summer 2013 shows are fizzing with such creative oomph that they put the offerings at this year's Frieze Art Fair to shame. New-shoe headlines will always be grabbed by the highest and wildest designs. Next summer's standouts include the Mt Etna-lofty heels carved by Dolce & Gabbana to resemble the colourful spokes of a Sicilian wagon wheel, and their wicker four-inchers in hand-hewn basket work. Then there was Pucci's Chinese dragon mega-heel, and the knee-high cutaway gladiator sandals offered by both Alexander Wang and Joseph Altuzarra in New York. Christopher Kane (left) and Alexander McQueen PHOTOS: Vladimir Potop Height, though, does not necessarily equal might in fashion's new-shoe landscape. The modest mid-heel, long overlooked as a retirement home for feet no longer engaged in cutting-edge promenading, is undergoing a renaissance. From Dries Van Noten's midis, which substituted traditional heel with a gobstopper-sized golden sphere, to Roksanda Ilincic's ALDO collaboration transparent toe-cap mules, the centre-ground of heel height has become hot again. The most striking midi of all was Louis Vuitton's grid-bedecked, Daniel Buren-inspired show, where the traditional kitten heel was given a dangerously pointy toe, and a 5.5cm heel as squared off and slim as a credit card. Another new shoe frontier is fashion's reclamation of the Perspex heel - a sole-style long associated primarily with strippers. Simone Rocha (in London), Consuelo Castiglione (for Marni in Milan) and Stella McCartney (in Paris) all exploited Perspex as a female friendly material. Erdem (left) and Fendi PHOTOS: Vladimir Potop IN PICTURES: London Fashion Week: Erdem spring/summer 2013 The strongest shoe designer presentations included Jimmy Choo, Tods, Tabitha Simmons and Bally. But the most innovative design of them all - the iPad to everyone else's laptops - was unveiled by Alvaro Gonzalez at SW1. The barefoot shoe is a Brunel-like feat of footwear engineering. A high wedge, it features an amputated shank that leaves the foot supported only under the toes and heel. A recipe for collapsed arches it may well be, but the floating-foot effect this shoe creates is startling - and according to reports, it is comfortable, too. "All of the parts of a shoe you'd think would be supporting the foot actually are not," says Gonzalez. So what you have is a radical and entirely new-looking shape. The most radical catwalk act of all, though, remains outfitting the models in flat shoes. At Celine, Phoebe Philo decided to line her pool slipper in mink and at Miu Miu - almost the very last show of the hundreds on fashion's month-long calendar - the models were given simple, flat-soled, leather sling-back sandals. High-fashion's dabbling with flats is significant because as well as that full-stop, the shoe also acts as a foundation: change its orientation from angled to horizontal and you have to reconsider the proportion of the clothes on top, too. This, though, is necessary because consumers are embracing high-fashion flats (or at the very least, near-flats). At Dolce & Gabbana, it may have been those Sicilian skyscraper wedges that grabbed the eye, yet the international department store buyers all bet strongly on the quieter but much more comfortable low-heeled sling-backs. One reason that fashion houses are funnelling so much thought into their footwear is that while shoe prices have gone up well beyond inflation during the past decade, they still sell unstoppably. Fendi (left) and Prada PHOTOS: Vladimir Potop In London, Selfridges and Harrods are both locked in a space race to offer the greatest amount of room dedicated to women's footwear: Harrods has 25,000 square feet (and a dedicated Manolo Blahnik boutique) while Selfridges has 35,000 square feet - a shoe department that's roomier than Tate Modern's Turbine Hall and which was, until this month, the largest in the world. Now, though, the Middle East has stolen a march on London as the planet's ultimate new-shoe hub. Level, a just-opened, 96,000 square feet, Dubai store has 15,000 different designer styles for sale at any one time. That's a lot of shoes to choose from. Here are just a few of the front-row standouts coming to a pavement near you next summer. READ: Milan Fashion Week: Prada spring/summer 2013 PRADA: MAID IN JAPAN Prada's enamel-flower adorned, geisha-style block heels worn under bow-fronted, cleft-toed, metallic leather ankle socks would be a head-turner at any party: the most out-there shoe of all next summer. READ: Object of desire: Prada's jewelled shoes FENDI: STRAPPED FOR ACTION The armour-like bridges along the top of Karl Lagerfeld's metallic-treated leather shoes for Fendi have something of the Sydney Opera House roof about them. Each is detachable via a hidden strap. The heels are moulded with a stud-relief intended to give a "detonating" effect. PUCCI: DRAGON HEELS This fierce, dragon-design four-inch wedge was the stand-out shoe at Pucci's sexy, Asian-inspired collection. The design was developed from a sketch, then hand-carved into a single block of wood and finally cast in ivory-like plastic. LOUIS VUITTON: BOW BELLES Utterly unsuitable for any social event held on a lawn, Louis Vuitton's sliver-heeled pumps all feature a double-square bow motif that echoes the company's Damier check. ALEXANDER MCQUEEN: BEES' KNEES Sarah Burton's show was based on bees and, she said, a paean to women. These honeycomb-punched, remarkably heeled (that's a hollowed Perspex filled with tiny Swarovski crystals) shoe boots for Alexander McQueen look a nightmare to walk in but were, reported the models, not bad at all. ERDEM: CLUNK THAT CLICKS Designed by Nicholas Kirkwood, this fluoro-floral platform has a clunky Crocodile Rock heaviness to it. This served as a perfect foil to the feather light, lace and snakeskin Erdem dresses worn above them. CHRISTOPHER KANE: BOLT UPRIGHT A peep-toe, flesh-coloured tone, ankle-strap, and a 4in heel: a classic design the Duchess of Cambridge might consider. But add clear plastic bolts at the ankle and toe to reference Christopher Kane's Frankenstein's monster theme next summer and you have an electrifying new shoe. SW1: ENGINEERING FEAT Alvaro Gonzalez's "barefoot wedge" for SW1 leaves half of your sole floating on air but, says a Telegraph test-driver, it's perfectly comfortable.