British luxury shoemaker Jimmy Choo, which has spent the past 40-ish years slipping handmade heels on anyone from Princess Diana to new brides, recently announced a collaboration with Sailor Moon creator Naoko Takeuchi. The capsule collection follows up Jimmy Choo’s 2022 collaboration with Takeuchi—a pair of $15,000 bespoke, fuschia boots, ornamented with 19,000 Swarovski crystals—and includes pumps, boots, and bags inspired by the Sailor Soldiers and their magical black cat Luna. And if anyone has a couple grand lying around, I would like to purchase some of it when it’s released on Valentine’s Day, please.
Are you seeing these shoes? We’ve got stretched jersey boots, rich pink like a berry vodka, spotted with crystal, heels little enough so that you can run away like crybaby Usagi Tsukino, Sailor Moon. I love the heavy square heel on the faux leather ode to baby blue Sailor Mercury, so sturdy, I could surely channel its steadfast energy into really learning how to use a computer.
Sailor Moon, a manga beginning in 1991 and anime franchise since 1992, is about 14-year-old whiner Usagi’s “[fight] for love and for justice” along with the rest of the Sailor Guardians, who all channel celestial, superhuman powers to defend and protect. The series is extremely fashionable, with both manga and anime characters frequently found in head-to-toe ‘90s Chanel, Dior, and scorpion-dark Thierry Mugler. The Sailors’ metamorphoses from regular girls to galactic Guardians are also based on their outfits, starting with the shoes that appear on their feet in bursts of heavenly light.
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“The notion of transformation via fashion is central to Naoko Takeuchi, and clothes play a vital role in the identity of her super heroines, especially their shoes, the most powerful transformer you can step into,” Jimmy Choo creative director Sandra Choi said in a press release. While I’d argue instead that nothing is as transformative as embracing your personality—Sailor Moon’s primary appeal, I think, is her willingness to be vulnerable and fallible—and I’d always recommend everyone buys stuff thoughtfully and slowly, I am not immune to the impulse to look like a cute girl in an anime.
Jimmy Choo’s collaboration landing page will stay blank, frighteningly blank, until Valentine’s Day, but the Sailor Moon website indicates prices go from 57,200 yen, or about $430, for a slim Sailor Guardians wallet to 1,975,600 yen, around $1,500, for those sparkly Sailor Moon boots. So, on account of my rent, I will not be buying them. You would, though, if you really loved me.
