If you are a regular reader here, you know that I have a strong fondness for design, nature, and…shoes. Which is why I fell head over heels for French photographer Julie Lavie’s Pantoufle de Vert (French for green slipper), a collection of shoes created from flowers and plants that she’s memorialized in a series of cultivated photographs.

Blending fashion and floral design, Lavie has her feet planted on the ground as she examines the ephemeral quality of this planted footwear, noting that the botanical shoes would inevitably decompose, only to endure when captured in an instant by the camera.

Musing that the photo could not exist without the shoe, and the shoe could not last over time without the photo, Lavie poses, “What is the work? The picture or the shoe?”

Lavie thinks of the series as floral poetry and a metaphor for the world of fashion where she sees everything is always in flux.

Like fashion, plants offer a wide range of shapes, colors and textures, all of which change according to the season.

In lieu of leather, silk, chiffon, satin, velvet, and organza, Lavie cobbles vegetables, flowers, and other plant parts into extravagant works of “horticouture” for which some women might want to trade their Manolos.

Edibles like cabbage, cucumbers, carrots, radishes, and peppers, along with roses, irises, buttercups, daffodils, and orchids become substitutions for traditional shoe materials.

Flower petals as flanges, stems for heels. Like Cinderella’s slipper, these green ones fit perfectly to the shape of the foot, adapting to the form as a plant would in its particular environment.

Goes to show you that you can have your shoe and eat it too.

h/t Behance. Photos via the photographer.

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