THEY were the girls with the golden shoes.

Kari Sigerson and Miranda Morrison couldn’t take a wrong step in their climb from Fashion Institute of Technology students to fashion-world darlings. Celebrities like Cameron Diaz were photographed in their NoLIta shop. Sarah Jessica Parker wore their white ankle boots in the first “Sex and the City” movie. Their gladiator sandals were so popular that in 2010 Vogue.com declared that “every summer is the season of the Sigerson Morrison sandal.”

So, why was Ms. Sigerson, the lanky blond half of the design duo, sitting at a cafe near South Street Seaport on a recent afternoon with little to do but wait for her lawyers to call? “It’s like ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers,’ ” she said, sipping coffee in jeans and Balenciaga flats. “I went into Barneys, and I didn’t even recognize them.”

She was referring, surprisingly enough, to her namesake shoe label. Just over a year ago, she and Ms. Morrison were fired from the company they had created, and now they find themselves watching from the sidelines as the retooled brand is presented at this week’s New York Shoe Expo without them.

It is a dramatic fall for the partners who, not long ago, seemed to embody every young designer’s dream. After building a cult shoe label from scratch, they found a big backer, Marc Fisher, the scion of the 9 West discount-shoe fortune, who they thought could take them to the stratosphere. But instead of turning Sigerson Morrison into the next Manolo Blahnik or Jimmy Choo, the deal went sour. Very sour.