Unsurprisingly, fashion freaks like Parsons student Julian Fetterman rejoiced. “I discovered Tabis by looking at old Margiela shows, and I always wondered if I could fit the biggest size of women’s,” Fetterman says. He resisted Cinderella stepsister-ing himself and copped a pair of the black high-heeled boots as soon as his size was released. “It’s such an important archival shoe for womenswear, so it was a big deal when they made the men’s iteration,” he says. L.A. based stylist Jordan Boothe had also patiently waited for his turn. Boothe, who claims he was the first man in L.A. to wear Tabis, has now collected a half-dozen pairs. “I literally wear Tabis every single day,” he says. “I wore them for two and a half months straight all through the fashion shows. I can’t even wear a normal shoe anymore.” Though Margiela sells split-toe socks, you don’t have to buy a week’s worth of special hosiery to get Tabi boots in the regular rotation. Boothe has a special sock hack: size up your Dri-Fits, and the extra fabric will stretch around the toe. Or, he says, “You can totally wear them sockless.”

Maison Margiela Spring-Summer 1995 Guy Marineau

But now the shoes are going mass (ok, sort of mass), and Fern isn’t the only celebrity dipping their toes. After The Internet’s Steve Lacy saw Boothe wearing Tabi slippers at a Shake Shack in Downtown L.A., Boothe helped Lacy get a grip of black, white, and metallic high tops. Lacy now puts on a masterclass in Tabi style nearly every time he performs on stage, and lovingly posts pictures of his new favorite boots on his Instagram stories. So does A$AP Nast. A$AP Rocky, hip-hop’s style leader if there ever was one, was spotted wearing black Tabis last October in Paris.

But celebrity endorsement, while potent, isn’t enough on its own to blast a shoe into the fashion stratosphere. For that, you need a little bit of luck. Though designed well before the advent of social media, the Margiela Tabi is the ideal shoe for the Instagram era. It simply begs to be snapped—and the shoe’s best angle is, arguably, from the wearer’s perspective. And unlike hyped-up sneakers, you can’t simply plug and play the Tabi boot with an existing wardrobe. To be done right, it requires full aesthetic commitment to the avant-garde. It’s no wonder cult fan accounts have celebrated Tabis for years on Tumblr and elsewhere.

But like just about every hyped fashion object from the last few years, the Tabi is a shoe that people love to hate. The leather toe slit, in its almost primitive sexiness, can render the casual beholder uncomfortable. More are shocked by its Baphometian associations. “When I bought the full heel black pair, I got looks for sure,” Fetterman says. “Little kids would be walking with their parents and they would be like ‘Oh, look at his goat feet’ or some shit like that.” Fern’s Globes debut spawned a scandalized Twitter moment before he had taken his seat.

Which is probably why Mr. Margiela is basically correct that his signature design has never been copied. Demna Gvasalia showed Tabi-style boots for Vetements Fall-Winter 2018, but versions are hardly flooding the market. (Gvasalia’s frequent Margiela design references are truer homages than most interpretations of the heavily-cited label: He worked at Maison Margiela from 2009, the year Martin Margiela retired, to 2012, and has argued that Margiela is more a philosophy than a house.) Whether you worship at the Antwerp fashion altar or not, the Margiela Tabi is a deeply satisfying shoe to encounter in the wild, because you know exactly what it is: an original design from one of the all-time masters. So when you look around in 2019 and see men—from celebs to fashion obsessives to your menswear-forum-haunting cousin—leaning into satyr swag, there’s no reason to be alarmed. It’s basically impossible to wear true pieces of fashion history these days, to own something that is equal parts original and provocative, to find a piece that feels more exciting the more iterations it undergoes. If you ask us, it’s about time the Tabi took over.