grounds’ SS27 “An Invitation” Turns Footwear Into Otherworldly Objects

What if an invitation arrived from a realm beyond our knowledge, asking what we would wear to meet the unknown? Presented at the Église Américaine de Paris, Mikio Sakabe’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection for grounds, titled “An Invitation,” confronts an over-informed world with radical surrealism. Rejecting the mundane patterns of daily life, the Japanese footwear label transforms shoes into speculative artifacts — objects bridging ancient ritual objects, futuristic robotics, and alien architecture. The atmospheric backdrop of the American Church in Paris sharpened this otherworldly tension, presenting footwear as a sacred armor for an unwritten future.

At the center of that world is POTTER, a new line that pushes the conventional high heel into far more sculptural territory. Inspired by the enduring visual language of Japanese dogū figures, the silhouette sharpens the toe while dramatically expanding the volume beneath the foot. Its one-piece hollow sole curves around open cavities at the front and rear, creating a smooth, glass-like appearance that makes the shoe seem almost blown rather than molded. Standing around 10 cm high, POTTER moves between refinement and distortion across several variations, including Little Star, All In One, Slash, Trotte and Rino. Each interprets the same bulbous foundation differently: from pointed, almost court-shoe uppers to strapped constructions, sporty lace-ups and extended sock-like forms.

The collection becomes more extreme with LONPIE, an amplified evolution of the LOOPIE structure first introduced for SS26. Enlarged into a mega-sole heel and fused with the silhouette of traditional Japanese koppori footwear, the design sits somewhere between gothic platform dressing and the armored feet of a robot anime character. Its scale is intentionally excessive — approximately 14 cm at the front and 20 cm at the rear — yet the sole is completely hollow, turning what appears massively heavy into a construction built around empty space. Elsewhere, grounds expands several of its established lines, moving between LOOPIE Mary Janes and ankle-cuff sandals, MOOPIE sneakers and boots, SKYSCRAPER models, JEWELRY silhouettes, JOG VISION FLUX, MANUS and the more aggressive BAT series. The breadth keeps SS27 from resting on a single oversized gesture, instead showing how the brand’s swollen sole language can move from feminine pumps and sandals to technical sneakers, boots and more hybridized shapes.

Nude pink, yellow, dark green, white, gray and black form the core palette, with clear and aurora-like soles, metallic finishes, cloudy translucencies and jolts of brighter color making many of the shoes appear suspended somewhere between organic matter and manufactured object. Soft pink POTTER heels can look almost porcelain-like, while darker green and black iterations take on a more industrial character; elsewhere, transparent cushioning, glossy surfaces and exaggerated cavities make even the collection’s more familiar sneakers feel slightly alien. The result is a collection that turns footwear into part costume, part artifact — a wardrobe for crossing the threshold described by its mysterious invitation, without ever quite revealing what waits on the other side.